Talk:Naf:eezah

1.2.1 Cp dimers: Energies and structures fine. What is the basis of the "endo rule"? What structural features are responsible for the differences in energy between 3 and 4?

1.2.2 NAD: The energies for 5 and 7 are a little odd - it's a pity you haven't included JMol structures that I can rotate to check. Well done for trying semi-empirical calcs, which would be useful for looking at the reaction TS.

1.2.3 Taxol: Again hard for me to say for sure without rotatable structures, but it looks to me like your "twist boat" conf of 9 is in fact the wrong diastereomer (the H's at the ring junction with the cyclohexane are trans relative to the CMe2). Nice explanation of the hyperstable alkene.

1.3.1 Carbene: Good

Mini-project: Quite a good choice of example. Why would EWG F stabilise an oxocarbenium ion?? Try converting the isomer energies in Hartrees (to 4 dp)to kcals - you migh find there is in fact quite a difference between them! You need to think about the symmetry of the Ph rings, which will explain why there are only 13 peaks in the reported 13C. Also, the doublets are explained by coupling to F! Good to see that the observed isomer best matches the prediction. In fact, 1H-1H couplings SHOULD be a key way to tell the isomers apart, providing you can distinguish the protons alpha-to the aryl groups in the spectrum. One of the isomers has both groups equatorial; in the other, one has to be axial. Thus the angles (and hence the J-values) will be quite different.

General point: you should try to improve your sentence construction. You often link independent clauses together with commas. This makes your text tricky to read.

Overall - good attempt at all parts