Talk:Mod:Sc2108 Module 1

1.2.1 Cp dimers: Your jmols for molecules 1 and 2 are the same. Some discussion about kinetic/thermodynamic control would have been nice.

1.2.2 NAD: You don’t really need to highlight atoms like this, it should be obvious to your audience from the mechanism alone what is happening. Nice to see a graphical presentation of your minimisation. The graph would also have done alone, there is little need for the table. How come your dihedral angle minimisation is so less detailed for 7? Your jmol for 7 is broken. Good discussion though.

1.2.3 Taxol: These are twist boats, not boats! Good energies though. It is not valid to directly compare the energies of the Taxol intermediates as alkenes and alkanes as they are not isomers.

1.3.1 Carbene: Why do you think PM6 returned incorrect results? Good to see you’re not blindly accepting the results the computer throws at you. Your orbital overlap explanation is a little convoluted. I don’t really need to see the spectra, a table of pertinent peaks would be fine

Mini-project: It’s a real pity you haven’t chosen your own project. It’s good to see you attempted to model the 1H spectra. However, there is absolutely no analysis of the data here or any sort of conclusion.

Overall: A little more proof reading would have been nice. I’m not sure I understand when you say you tried three reactions and they didn’t work, it would still have been good to see what you were attempting, especially if you did spend a lot of time on them. Mini[project aside, a very good piece of work.