I was lucky enough to attend the announcement made in 2012 of the discovery of the Higgs Boson. It consisted of a hour-long talk mostly about statistics, and how the particle physics community can only claim a discovery when their data has achieved a 5σ confidence level. This represents a 1 in 3.5 million probability of the result occurring by chance. I started thinking: how much chemistry is asserted at that level of confidence?

In the previous post I mentioned in passing the Grignard reagent benzyl magnesium bromide as having tetrahedral coordination at Mg. But I have now noticed, largely through spotting Steve Bachrach’s post on “Acene dimers – open or closed?” another geometric effect perhaps worthy of note, certainly one not always noted in the past; that of dispersion forces.

This is a continuation of the discussion started on Steve Bachrach’s blog about a molecule with a very short H…H interaction involving two Si-H groups with enforced proximity. It had been inferred from the X-ray structure[cite]10.1021/ja407398w[/cite] that the H…H distance was in the region of 1.50Å. It’s that cis-butene all over again! So is that H…H region a bond? Is it attractive or repulsive? Go read Steve’s blog first.

A quartet of articles has recently appeared on the topic of cyclobutadiene.[cite]10.1002/chem.201102942[/cite],[cite]10.1002/chem.201103017[/cite],[cite]10.1002/chem.201203234[/cite],[cite]10.1002/chem.201203235[/cite]. You will find a great deal discussed there, but I can boil it down to this essence.

An extensive discussion developed regarding my post on a fascinating helical [144]-annulene.

Metathesis reactions are a series of catalysed transformations which transpose the atoms in alkenes or alkynes.

In this follow-up to the previous post, I will try to address the question what is the nature of the bonds in penta-coordinate carbon ? This is a difficult question to answer with any precision, largely because our concept of a bond derives from trying to define what the properties of the electrons located in the region between any two specified atoms are.

Understanding how molecules interact (bind) with each other when in close proximity is essential in all areas of chemistry. One specific example of this need is for the molecule shown below. The Pirkle reagent This is the so-called Pirkle Reagent and is much used to help resolve the two enantiomers of a racemic mixture, particularly drug molecules.