The last two posts have played a game of find the electrons. We saw how the dyotropic rearrangement of ethane borrowed electrons from the C-C bond, and how 1,2,dibromoethane went ionic on us. How about this mixed system, in which a hydrogen and a BH ₂ swap their positions? Dyotropic rearrangement involving boron and hydrogen. It is yet again different.

In the previous post,  I discussed what we could learn from ethane by forcing it into a pericyclic dyotropic rearrangement. We saw how it voraciously scavenged two electrons from the  C-C bond to achieve this. What if we give it more electrons? Thus 1,2-dibromoethane undergoing the same reaction. Dyotropic rearrangement of 1,2-dibromoethane.

In a time when large (molecules) are considered beautiful (or the corollary that beauty must be big), it is good to reflect that small molecules may teach us something as well. Take ethane. Is there anything left which has not been said about it already? Well, consider the reaction below, in which two hydrogen atoms mutually hop from one carbon to the other. The dyotropic reaction of ethane.