The journal of chemical education has many little gems providing inspiration for laboratory experiments. Jonathan Piard reports one based on the reaction below[cite]10.1021/ed4005003[/cite]; here I investigate the mechanism of this transformation. There are two things going on here;

The journal of chemical education can be a fertile source of ideas for undergraduate student experiments. Take this procedure for asymmetric epoxidation of an alkene.[cite]10.1021/ed077p271[/cite] When I first spotted it, I thought not only would it be interesting to do in the lab, but could be extended by incorporating some modern computational aspects as well.