Archive for November, 2016

Long C-C bonds.

Wednesday, November 30th, 2016

In an earlier post, I searched for small C-C-C angles, finding one example that was also accompanied by an apparently exceptionally long C-C bond (2.18Å). But this arose from highly unusual bonding giving rise not to a single bond order but one closer to one half! How long can a “normal” (i.e single) C-C bond get, a question which has long fascinated chemists.

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OpenCon (2016)

Friday, November 25th, 2016

Another conference, a Cambridge satellite meeting of OpenCon, and I quote here its mission: “OpenCon is a platform for the next generation to learn about Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data, develop critical skills, and catalyze action toward a more open system of research and education” targeted at students and early career academic professionals. But they do allow a few “late career” professionals to attend as well!

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Hydrogen bonding to chloroform.

Monday, November 14th, 2016

Chloroform, often in the deuterated form CDCl3, is a very common solvent for NMR and other types of spectroscopy. Quantum mechanics is increasingly used to calculate such spectra to aid assignment and the solvent is here normally simulated as a continuum rather than by explicit inclusion of one or more chloroform molecules. But what are the features of the hydrogen bonds that form from chloroform to other acceptors? Here I do a quick search for the common characteristics of such interactions.

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Pidapalooza!

Thursday, November 10th, 2016

This is sent from the Pidapalooza event in Reykjavik, Iceland, and is a short collection of notable things I learnt or which attracted my attention.

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The largest C-C-C angle?

Tuesday, November 1st, 2016

I am now inverting the previous question by asking what is the largest angle subtended at a chain of three connected 4-coordinate carbon atoms? Let’s see if further interesting chemistry can be unearthed.

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