Talk:Mod:RM13Q4

Cpd dimers: “Observed experimentally” is a preferable phrase to “been seen”. Jmols? It would have been nice to have an in depth explanation of thermo/kinetic control but it reads as if you understand the concepts involved. A very in depth analysis here.

Taxol: I do like mechanisms to be incorporated. The structures of you higher energy conformer is incorrect (look at the bicyclic rings). Still, you have a thorough and detailed discussion. Good work.

Carbene: Nice to see you caught the lack of orbital symmetry. This is actually caused by a bug in the implementation of PM6 is ChemBio. Can you think of a reason why there is such a pronounced difference between the two alkenes? The reason for the change in IR spectra is a lot simpler that you think. Remember, you were asked to model the orbitals of the molecule. Is there any sort of interaction or donation that could explain all the observations?

Glycosidation: If you plan to have so many figures, it might be an idea to label them in the future. A nice, slightly off tangent, MO investigation but a good way to highlight the differences between MM2 and MOPAC methods. However, you could have explored this a little further. Do you notice any similarities between A and C, say, when using MOPAC? Perhaps you should think of the system in terms of nucleophilic attacks. Still, this is a good, and quite enthusiastic, exploration of computational chemistry.

Mini-project: A shame you didn’t choose your own project. Good to see a graphical presentation of the differences involved. I wouldn’t worry too much about the OR, the calculations are never that accurate. Good to see you thinking of the selectivity involved in the reaction to make cubebol.

Overall: Excellent introduction and quite thorough referencing. It’s a personal (and journal specific if you look in the literature) preference but I prefer all the references to be collected at the end; still, this is entirely up to you. A very enthusiastic project, I liked you further explorations, although it seems they sometimes took preference over a more detailed exploration of the given problem.