From Acid-Catalyzed Hydration of Alkenes In the previous post, we talked about the acid-catalyzed hydration of alkenes, which, in general, is a “Markovnikov” addition of water, giving the corresponding alcohol. A quick reminder, Markovnikov’s rule is followed when the X component … Read more
Acid-Catalyzed hydration is the addition of water to an alkene which forms an alcohol: Â Â The reaction goes through a stepwise mechanism which starts with the protonation of the double bond: Â Â The presence of an acid is … Read more
We learned earlier that according to Markovnikov’s rule, the addition of an HX acid to an alkene produces the more substituted alkyl halide as the major product:   Interestingly, in the presence of peroxides, HBr forms the less substituted … Read more
Let’s state the objective of this post right away. We need to explain why the following reaction produces one of the alkenes as the major product:   This preference for addition to alkenes was first explained by Markovnikov and … Read more
