ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Corey–Kim oxidation

Imagine you have a toy car that is made up of different parts. One of the parts is the wheels that help the car move. Now, let's pretend that the wheels are made up of lots of different building blocks or Lego pieces. If you wanted to make the wheels spin really fast, you would need to take some of those Lego pieces apart and add something new to make the wheels work better.

That's kind of like what the Corey-Kim oxidation does to molecules. Molecules are like tiny Lego structures, made up of different pieces. Sometimes scientists want to take molecules apart and add something new to make them work better or do something different.

The Corey-Kim oxidation is a special way of doing this. It uses special chemicals that can break apart certain parts of a molecule and replace them with something new. It's like taking out a red Lego piece and putting in a blue one instead.

What makes the Corey-Kim oxidation really cool is that it can do this in a very controlled way. So scientists can choose which parts of the molecule they want to change and add new things to make the molecule work better. It's kind of like being able to customize your toy car with different parts to make it work better or faster.

Overall, the Corey-Kim oxidation is a way for scientists to take molecules apart and replace certain pieces with something new, so they can create new chemicals or materials that work better or do something different. It's like taking apart a Lego car and building something even cooler and more advanced.