drogen peroxide is formed in the cells of plants and animals but is toxic to them. neemen Consequently, living systems hav developed mechanisms to rid themselves of hydrogen peroxide, usually by enzyme-catalyzed reduction to water. An under- standing of how reactions take place, be they reactions in living systems or reactions in

first three chapters established some fundamental principles concerning the structure of organic molecules. In this chapter we begin our discussion of organic chemical reactions by directing attention to alcohols and alkyl halides. These two rank among the most useful classes of organic compounds because they often serve as starting materials for the preparation of numerous other families

ow that we've reviewed the various bonding models, we are ready to examine organic compounds in respect to their structure, reactions, properties, and appli cations. Were we to list the physical and chemical properties of each of the more than million organic compounds separately, it would tax the capacity of even a pow- erful computer. Yet someone who is trained in organic chemistry can simply look at the structure

tructure* is the key to everything in chemistry. The properties of a substance depend on the atoms it contains and the way the atoms are connected. What is less 0 obvious, but very powerful, is the idea that someone who is trained in chemistry can look at a structural formula of a substance and tell you a lot about its properties

he Greek word stereos means\solid, \and stereochemistry refers to chemistry in three dimensions. The foundations of organic stereochemistry were laid by Jacobus van't Hoff* and Joseph Achille Le Bel in 1874. Independently of each other, van't Hoff and Le Bel proposed that the four bonds to carbon were directed toward the cor- ners of a tetrahedron. One consequence of a tetrahedral arrangement of bonds to carbon

W hen we discussed elimination reactions in Chapter 5, we learned that Lewis base can react with an alkyl halide to form an alkene. In the present chapter, you will find that the same kinds of reactants can also undergo a different reaction, one in which the Lewis base acts as a nucleophile to substitute for the halide substituent on carbon

ot all the properties of alkenes are revealed by focusing exclusively on the func- tional group behavior of the double bond. A double bond can affect the proper- ties of a second functional unit to which it is directly attached. It can be a sub- stituent, for example, on a positively charged carbon in an allylic carbocation, or on a carbon that bears an unpaired electron in an allylic free radical, or it can

ntil the second half of the twentieth century, the structure of a substance-a newly discovered natural product, for example-was determined using information obtained from chemical reactions. This information included the identification of functional groups by chemical tests, along with the results of experiments in which the substance was broken down into smaller, more readily identifiable fragments. Typical of this approach is the demonstration of the presence of a double bond in an alkene by cat- nd subsequent

rganometallic compounds are compounds that have a carbon-metal bond; they lie at the place where organic and inorganic chemistry meet. You are already familiar with at least one organometallic compound, sodium acetylide (NaC=CH), which has an ionic bond between carbon and sodium. But just because a compound contains both a metal and carbon isn't enough to classify it as organometal-

n contrast to alcohols with their rich chemical reactivity, ethers (compounds contain- ing a C-0-C unit) undergo relatively few chemical reactions. As you saw wher we discussed Grignard reagents in Chapter 14 and lithium aluminum hydride reduc- tions in Chapter 15, this lack of reactivity of ethers makes them valuable as solvents in a number of synthetically important transformatio. In the present chapter you will learn