Chemistry

Nucleophilic Substitution

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." Albert Einstein

I started this article with the quote by Albert Einstein, the famous twentieth century physic scientist, to provide inspiration and hope to students who are currently struggling and frustrate with organic chemistry. For whatever reasons, there is one thing that is absolutely certain which is you can not keep doing what you have been doing and expect a different result. That also apply to organic chemistry as well. If you have been either completely lost of what your professor is teaching or not passing the exam, then please read this article to provide a renew perspective. I have been in your shoes and I want to provide my experience so you can either learn from my mistakes or simply use this blog as a resource.

For the majority of students taking this course, the chemical reactions that I will illustrate as examples in this article will seem foreign to you at first or simply deja vu. If you are reading this article at this moment, I can safely assume either you had made the decision to muster through this course voluntary or the alternative choice does not appear to be an option. With any articles that I write, I like to put my student's hat on and explain the subject matter in an easy, understand, and digestible manner. My goal is that after you finished reading this article, you will come out with a new confidence and a better understanding grasping of the content presented so that you can be in a better position to prepare for your exam. So don't worry about any classroom lecture notes or me asking you to dive into your textbook.

With that being said, here are the following topics that I will discuss in this post. Topics are as follow:

1. What are Nucleophilic Aliphatic Substitution Reactions?
2. What solvents work best for nucleophilic substitution reactions?
3. What is the mechanism for the nuclophilic aliphatic substiution?
4. What laboratory evidence supports for SN1 and SN2 mechanisms?

What are Nucleophilic Aliphatic Substitution Reactions?

For starters, let starts with the definition, what is a nucleophile? The word "nucleophile was derived from Greek which in essence when translate means nucleus loving or nucleus seeking. In chemistry term, that means nucleophile is a Lewis base. Lewis base is where an atom or molecule donates a lone pair of electrons (:) to another atom or ion to form a new covalent bond.

Nucleophile aliphatic substitution can be very simply summarized by the generic reaction provided below.

Nucleophilic Aliphatic Substitution

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