Talk:Organic:clubbanger

Cp dimers: structures and energies all OK. You haven't discussed why the endo Diels-Alder isomer is formed faster, nor explained why one of the hydrogenation products is more stable than the other.

NAD: What were the energies for your structures? For 7, it is possible to find both "up" and "down" isomers, and then see which is lower in energy.

Taxol: Your energy for the "carbonyl up" isomer seems fine, but the down one is too high. I can't rotate your (non-JMol) structures, so I can't see exactly why, but a common reason is that the 6-ring is either in a boat or (I think more likely here) in an alternative chair conformation (the chair "flips" on going from the up carbonyl isomer to the lowest energy isomer of the down one). Nice explanation of the low alkene reactivity.

Carbene - generally good, concise answer

Mini-project: Nice choice (although the possibility of rotation about the bond between the ester and the ring means that there are several possible conformations). What's missing is a quantitative (statistical?) comparison of the calculated and reported 13C values to see how well they compare. Even listing them side-by-side would have helped. How did the authors of the paper tell which-was-which, and if they didn't say, how do you think it was done?

Overall - you got most of the calcs done OK, with a few bits missing in the discussion