Lectures

Acetamide
Introduction into Physical Organic Chemistry

This lecture will be given in English

The goal of physical organic chemistry is to derive the course, rate constants, and equilibria of reactants and products for any reactions under any reaction conditions from first principles. Thus, the focus is on reaction mechanisms and methods to elucidate mechanisms.
In recent years, there have been numerous experimental advances in the field of physical organic chemistry. Femtochemistry, for example, allows bond formation and bond breaking to be studied directly, as with a stroboscope. This even allows the transition state of a chemical reaction to be characterized spectroscopically, which was unthinkable until recently. The greatest progress, however, has taken place in the field of "experimental computational chemistry." Many details of chemical reactions can be calculated with near experimental accuracy using accurate quantum chemical methods. Often, experimental findings can only be interpreted by accurate calculations. The interplay between theory and experiment is thus of particular importance, from which both experiment and theory benefit.
The lecture will not deal systematically with specific reaction mechanisms (e.g. SN1 reactions or pericyclic reactions), but rather introduce general concepts and modern methods. Among the concepts, the emphasis is on the theory of reaction hypersurfaces. The selection of methods is somewhat arbitrary and not exhaustive, but preference has been given to modern methods that are rarely covered in other lectures. These methods are discussed using specific examples from the recent literature.

This lecture is for:
MSc Chemistry, MSc Biochemmistry, PhD students.

Recomended literature:
N. Isaacs "Physical Organic Chemistry", Longman, Harlow 1995, 2nd edition.

T. H. Lowry, K. S. Richardson "Mechanism and Theory in Organic Chemistry", Harper and Row, N. Y. 1987, 3rd edition.

E. V. Anslyn, D. A. Dougherty „Modern Physical Organic Chemistry“, University Science Books, 2006.

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