The kinetics of the reactions of amino acids with stabilized diarylcarbenium ions (Ar(2)CH(+)) have been studied photometrically in aqueous solution at variable pH. In the range of 10.5 < pH < 12, the amino acids react much faster than the competing nucleophiles hydroxide and water. Though the pK(aH) values of the amino acids vary by almost four units, the nucleophilic reactivities of all prima...

The present approach for determining the electrophilicity (E) and nucleophilicity (N) of aldehydes includes a kinetic study of KMNO4 oxidation and NaBH4 reduction of aldehydes. A transition state analysis of the KMNO4 promoted aldehyde oxidation reaction has been performed, which shows a very good correlation with experimental results. The validity of the experimental method has been tested usi...

The specific rates of solvolysis of propargyl chloroformate (1) are analyzed in 22 solvents of widely varying nucleophilicity and ionizing power values at 25.0 °C using the extended Grunwald-Winstein equation. Sensitivities to solvent nucleophilicity (l) of 1.37 and to solvent ionizing power (m) of 0.47 suggest a bimolecular process with the formation of a tetrahedral intermediate. A plot of th...

Several recent studies have shown that OOHhas no greater reactivity than oHin the gas phase. This is in striking contrast to the solution phase observation that OOHhas an enhanced nucleophilicity over oH(the "alpha-effect") . The gas-phase results were thought to put into jeopardy the FMO orbital-splitting explanation of the alpha-effect, since, it was reasoned, such an effect should be indepen...