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Organic chemistry
Course: Organic chemistry > Unit 3
Lesson 3: Conformations of alkanesNewman projection practice 2
How to determine the most and least stable conformations using Newman projections.
Want to join the conversation?
- why carbon 3 has a methyle group while 4 has 2 hydrogens?? how am i suppose to know whether to put a methyle group or a hydrogen?(5 votes)
- If you look at the bond-line structure, you see that C-3 has a methyl group (the wedge).
C-4 has two hydrogens. We don't usually show them explicitly in bond-line structures, but they must be there to make up the four valences of carbon.(4 votes)
- At, Jay said it doesn't matter whether you rotate the front or back carbon. Can anyone explain to me why? 6:18(4 votes)
- Because you would end up with the same molecular conformations. If you were to flip the whole molecule around, like so what was the back carbon goes to the front, you would have the same molecule.(6 votes)
- At, how can we conclude that the second conformation has a higher energy than the first one? Without calculating and comparing the total energy of methyl-ethyl gauche interaction and hydrogen-methyl gauche interaction, with, that of methyl-methyl gauche interaction and ethyl-hydrogen gauche interaction, how can we tell which one is least stable? 9:36(3 votes)
- The conformations shown atare eclipsed conformations. 9:36
You do have to add all the individual repulsions to get the total strain energies, but the Et-Et repulsions are the main factor.
Assume that the repulsion energies (in kJ/mol) are:
H-H = 4; H-Me = 6; H-Et = 8; Me-Me = 11; Me-Et = 13; Et-Et = 15.
Which conformer do you calculate to be the least stable?(5 votes)
- What is the torsional strain between two eclipsed ethyl groups?(3 votes)
- Why does the methyl group has to be in carbon 3? Why not carbon 4 or the others?(2 votes)
- It's just the example he came up with. The first diagram had the methyl on carbon 3 so it's on carbon 3. Also if it was on carbon 4, the carbon 4 would actually become carbon 3 anyway because of the nomenclature rules.(2 votes)
- How do you know if eclipsed or staggered is more or less stable? does it depend on the molecule or is staggered always more stable?(1 vote)
- A staggered conformation is always more stable. For more detail, watch the first couple videos in this tutorial, which are about the basics of staggered and eclipsed conformations. :)(3 votes)
- At, how is there only one gauche interaction? Can gauche interactions not be formed with hydrogens? 7:08(2 votes)
- Why aren't there Gauche interactions between hydrogens? Do they only exist between bigger groups like methyl and ethyl?(2 votes)
- Does it matter which carbon is on top while we draw/view a Newman projection?(1 vote)
- how do you know which hydrogens will be coming out and which will be going away from us in space?(1 vote)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] Let's get some more practice with Newman projections. So, for this compound,
we're gonna look down the c three c four bond and draw
the most stable conformation. So let's start by numbering our carbons. This must be carbon one, two, three, four, five, and six, and if we look down the
c three c four bond, that's this bond right here, we're gonna put our eye along this axis. Let me draw an eye in here, so we're going to stare down this way and draw what we see. Well I'll show you in a video in a minute what we would actually see, but it's very important
to be able to draw these Newman projections without
the use of a model. So let's start by thinking
about what is attached to this carbon three here. There's a methyl group
coming out at us in space, which means there must also
be a hydrogen going away from us in space, and what is attached to carbon four? There must be a hydrogen
coming out at us in space, so a hydrogen here, and a hydrogen going
away from us in space, so now that we've drawn
that in, we can start to draw our Newman projection. And we start with a point
or a dot to represent carbon three, so that point
there is carbon three. What is attached to carbon three? Well, there is a methyl group
that would be going down and to the right, so if
your eye is here, you'll see a methyl group going
down and to the right, so let's draw in a C H three
down and to the right like that and then we also have a
hydrogen, so this hydrogen will be going down and to the left, so let's draw in that
hydrogen down and to the left. Next, we would have a C H two,
C H three, or an ethyl group and this would actually
be going straight up if we're looking at it
from this perspective, so this would be going straight up, so let's right C H two, C H three. Next, we need to think about carbon four, so we're thinking about
this carbon right here. We wouldn't be able to see
it because carbon three would be in the way, but we know that carbon four
is there and we represent carbon four with a circle
on our Newman projection. What is attached to carbon four? Well we know that we
have a hydrogen going up and to the right, so let's draw that in, so there's a hydrogen
going up and to the right attached to carbon four. There's also, there's
also, a hydrogen going up and to the left attached to carbon four, so let's draw that in on
our Newman projection. And then, finally, we would
have a C H two, C H three, and this would be going down, so a C H two, C H three going down, so let's draw that in, C H two, C H three. We ll it gets annoying to
draw in all these C H two's and C H three's, so
let's, let's redraw this Newman projection. Let's say that C H two, C
H three, we know that's an ethyl group, so let's
abbreviate that with Et, and a methyl group,
let's just say that's Me, and then we have our hydrogen right here, and then for our back carbon,
we have a hydrogen here, we have a hydrogen here, and then we have an ethyl group going straight down. It's just a little bit
easier to see this way, and in the video, I'm gonna
make an ethyl group red, so you're gonna see a red, a red circle, a red sphere for an
ethyl group in the video, and I'll make the methyl group blue, so it's easier to show
different conformations, if you just represent it by a sphere, and you'll see what I mean, and from the video, we're gonna figure out the most stable conformation. We know that has to be a
staggered conformation, from earlier videos, so we'll
look at all the different staggered conformations,
and we'll pick which one is the most stable. Here we have carbon one,
and then carbon two, and then carbon three, notice there's a methyl group
coming out at us in space, attached to carbon three. Then we have carbon four, and we're gonna stare down
the carbon three-four bonds, so let's rotate the molecule
here and let's stare down the c three, c four
bonds, and notice we have a staggered conformation. Up here, we have an ethyl group. On the right here, we have a methyl group, and then down here, we
have another ethyl group, so hopefully you see the
staggered conformation. Remember that red is an ethyl group, so here's an ethyl group,
and here's an ethyl group, and blue represents the methyl group. It's just easier to work
with the model set this way, so we're going for
staggered conformations, so if I rotate the front carbon
and keep the back carbon, keep the back carbon stationary, we get another staggered conformation, and if I rotate again, then we get another staggered conformation. Hopefully you can see the
Newman projection that we drew matches the picture from the video, and this is the same Newman projection. I just made the ethyl groups
red and the methyl group blue. In the video we moved the front carbon, we rotated the front carbon, we held the back carbon stationary, so this ethyl group in red would
move over to this position. The methyl group in blue would
move over to this position, and finally, this hydrogen
right here, I'll make it green, would move over to this position, so that's this hydrogen in green. Let's go ahead and draw
the next conformation, the next staggered conformation. If we held the back carbon stationary, we can go ahead and
draw in the back carbon and what's attached to the back carbon, these hydrogens and this ethyl group, and next, the ethyl group
in red, on the front carbon moved over to this position. The methyl group in blue
moved over to this position and the hydrogen in green
moved over to this position, so we can see that matches what we have, what we have for our picture down here. We have our two ethyl groups
are now gauched to each other and then we have our methyl
group over here in blue, and our hydrogen in green,
let me highlight that. The hydrogen in green is this hydrogen. We can rotate one more
time to get our last staggered conformation. Our ethyl group in red
can rotate over here. The methyl group in blue
could rotate over here, and that would mean the
hydrogen in green has to rotate over to this position. So then draw in the back
carbon with the hydrogens and then the ethyl group. It doesn't matter if
you rotate the front or the back carbon. I chose to rotate the front carbon here, and that would move our ethyl
group over to this position. So now our ethyl group is here. The methyl group in blue
would move up to here, and the hydrogen in green
would move over to here, so hopefully we can see that. Let me highlight everything. So here's an ethyl group, all right, so down here we can see our ethyl groups, our methyl group in blue, and finally, our hydrogen in green, so now we're finally able
to choose the most stable conformation out of our
three staggered ones here. So we need to think about
the gauche interactions that are present, and we'll
start with this conformation on the right. Here, we have an ethyl-ethyl
gauche interaction, and ethyl groups are pretty
bulky, so this gauche interaction would destabilize
this conformation. Let's look at this conformation next. We have an ethyl-ethyl gauche
interaction, and we also have a methyl-ethyl gauche interaction, so we have two gauche interactions, so that means that this
conformation is even more unstable and finally, we have this one right here. We have only one gauche
interaction and it's between an ethyl group and a methyl group, and since this methyl group
is not as bulky as another ethyl group, that means
this is the lowest energy conformation. This is the most stable. In part b, our goal is to draw
the least stable conformation or the one highest in energy, and that must be an eclipsed conformation, so let's go to the video, and let's start with the staggered, and then go to an eclipsed conformation, and from that eclipsed
conformation, we'll look at the others and we'll choose the
one that's the highest energy. So here we have our
staggered conformation. If I rotate the front carbon, we see one eclipsed conformation. I can rotate again to get
another eclipsed conformation, so here's another one. You can see this one
has the two ethyl groups really close together. I can rotate again to get our
final eclipsed conformation. Here we have pictures
of the three eclipsed conformations from the video, and to save time, let's
just analyze the pictures and then we'll draw the
least stable conformation as a Newman projection. Let's start with the
conformation on the right. We can see we have an ethyl
group eclipsing a hydrogen, a methyl group eclipsing a hydrogen, and a hydrogen eclipsing an ethyl group, so we don't have any of
the alkyl groups eclipsing each other, so this one,
this one is definitely not the least stable. We're looking for bulky groups
interfering with each other, so steric hindrance. Let's move over here to this conformation. We have two hydrogens
eclipsing each other, we have an ethyl group
eclipsing a hydrogen, and then we have a methyl
group eclipsing an ethyl group, so there's a source of some strain, so that's gonna increase in energy, so this conformation is
definitely higher in energy than this conformation, but let's compare this
one to our center one. For the center one, we have
two very bulky ethyl groups, so an ethyl group eclipsing
another ethyl group, and that is very unstable, right? This increases the energy. That's a lot of steric strain, so this, this is the
least stable conformation. These ethyl groups want to be
as far away from each other as possible, and here we've
put them very close together in space, so let's go ahead and
draw the Newman projection for this conformation, and we start with this carbon, so that carbon is represented by a point, and attached to that carbon
we have a methyl group going up and to the left. We have a hydrogen going
up and to the right, and we have an ethyl group going down. For the back carbon, so here's the circle
representing the back carbon, we have a hydrogen going
up and to the left, so there's our hydrogen. We have another hydrogen back here, so I'll draw that one, and then finally, we have
an ethyl group going down. So this is our least stable
conformation for our compound, drawn as an eclipsed conformation
in a Newman projection.