Scientists are calling for changes to chemistry textbooks after discovering a fundamental aspect of structural organic chemistry has been incorrectly described for almost 100 years.
A team from Cardiff University’s School of Chemistry used advanced computational methods to analyse the distribution of electrons in molecules with alkyl groups.
And their findings, published in the journal Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry, overturn almost 100 years of dogma in the field of organic chemistry.
Lead author Dr Mark Elliott said: “This information on what we call the inductive effect of alkyl groups is found in every organic chemistry textbook, and is used to explain a whole range of properties of molecules.
“Since I’d always been taught that alkyl groups were inductively electron-donating, I was quite surprised a few years ago to start having doubts. There are some pieces of data that simply made no sense to me.
“Since the information in all textbooks is wrong, they will need to be corrected, which is a pretty big deal, and I cannot remember this ever happening.”
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