Talk:Mod:sp mod1

1.1 Generally excellent. Actually, the alkene hydrogenation is unlikely to be thermodynamically controlled (which implies reversibility) – it will be kinetically controlled. However, we’re using the thermodynamic stability of the products as an approximation/guideline for the barriers leading to them.

1.2 Structure for 5 OK I think (hard to say as I can’t rotate it) although your energy seems low. Is the carbonyl “up” or “down”? For 7, it looks like all your structures have the carbonyl pointing more or less the same way. There should be another conf with it pointing on the other side of the ring

1.3 Your structures have the wrong double bond geometry – also, both have the 6-ring in a boat conf. Conclusions good re: alkene reactivity. Your hydrogenated structures look really odd – some very close C atoms – surprised these are minima and the energies are so low!

1.4 Your two structures for 13 have the OH in the wrong orientation relative to the ring junction protons (i.e. you’ve modelled the wrong diastereomer). This is a complex question - it looks to us like one would need to model the tetrahedral intermediates rather than the ground state confs in any case.

1.5 Good

Mini-project Calcs all seem to have worked fine! Would have been good to have tried to quantify how good the correlation is for each isomer (see the provided lit refs to the 13C prediction method). Also, what are the key differences between the two isomers’ spectra, and why?

Overall – generally very well written and presented. Just a few “odd” structures.