I'm confused about hybrid orbitals in organic chem.?

Question

Can someone explain a little about sp3, sp2, and sp hybrid orbitals. I just don't get it. I've read the book, i've looked on wiki. I need help!!!

Answer 1

My OChem teacher explains it this way, looking at carbon.

Carbon has four valence electrons, 1 2s orbital and 3 2p orbitals. If you look at them separately, you see that the first two electrons go into 2s because it's lower energy, the next one goes into 2px, and the last into 2py. And we see that carbon forms two bonds. There's a technical term for this: WRONG! :)

So, imagine you have 4 guests in your house, and you have 1 tomato and 3 pieces of celery. How do you make sure that everyone gets *exactly* the same thing?

You have to blend them all together. You would put your ingredients, tomato (1 of them) and celery (3 of them), in a blender, pour into four glasses, serve chilled.

So with carbon, we take our s (1 of them) and our p (3 of them), blend them together and we have 4 s1p3 (ie. sp3) orbitals. 4 single bonds, everything even.

We could also take s (1 of them) and p (2 of them), and we'll have 3 s1p2 (sp2) orbitals. This is the case with ethylene -- the sp2 orbitals make 3 sigma bonds (2 for the single, 1 for the double), and the un-blended p orbital makes the pi bond.

Likewise, sp is 1 s and 1 p orbital (s1p1).

Hope this helps. I've found this subject troublesome, too.

Answer 2

Yes, I can. But I doubt I could do it on here. I teach the stuff in my chemistry classes and I can usually get it through to students when we can interact live and discuss a periodic table, etc. If you're not in Northwest Ohio I doubt I can be of much help to you. Otherwise, if you have specific questions you can pin down about it, you can try messengering with me on yahoo messenger. My ID is
fortitudinousskeptic

Answer 3

React benzene with the two butyl anhydride (CH3CH2CH2C(=O)OC(=O)CH2CH2CH3) or butyryl chloride (CH3CH2CH2COCl) making use of AlCl3 ie the Friedel-Craft reaction. The synthetic from this may be one million-phenylbutan-one million-one. next cut back back it making use of the Wolff-Kishner reaction. it extremely is achieved cut back than complication-unfastened circumstances and ought to not grant approximately acid catalyzed rearrangements. The Clemmensen help is run cut back than acidic circumstances and ought to grant approximately rearrangements. i think of the cycloheptatriene you describe is aromatic. i'm hoping this facilitates