Thorpe–Ingold effect
Alright kiddo, imagine you have a box of crayons and you want to draw a picture of a flower. But wait, you want to make this flower look special and extra pretty. So, you decide to use two colors for each petal instead of just one. You pick the colors red and yellow, and start coloring the petals. You notice something strange happening, though. The petals don't look like they're half red and half yellow. Instead, they look more red than yellow.
This weird thing that you just noticed, where one color seems to take over more than half of your drawing, is kind of like the Thorpe-Ingold effect! The Thorpe-Ingold effect is a rule that says that when two chemical groups are put together on the same molecule, one group might be stronger than the other. It's like if you had one crayon that was stronger than the other, and it made your drawing look different.
Sometimes, the stronger group, called the "activating group," can make the molecule more reactive, meaning it's more likely to react with other molecules. Other times, the stronger group, called the "deactivating group," can make the molecule less reactive.
So, just like how your red crayon was stronger than your yellow crayon in your drawing, a chemical group can also be stronger or weaker than another one. That's the Thorpe-Ingold effect, and it helps scientists predict how a molecule will react in certain situations. Pretty cool, huh?
This weird thing that you just noticed, where one color seems to take over more than half of your drawing, is kind of like the Thorpe-Ingold effect! The Thorpe-Ingold effect is a rule that says that when two chemical groups are put together on the same molecule, one group might be stronger than the other. It's like if you had one crayon that was stronger than the other, and it made your drawing look different.
Sometimes, the stronger group, called the "activating group," can make the molecule more reactive, meaning it's more likely to react with other molecules. Other times, the stronger group, called the "deactivating group," can make the molecule less reactive.
So, just like how your red crayon was stronger than your yellow crayon in your drawing, a chemical group can also be stronger or weaker than another one. That's the Thorpe-Ingold effect, and it helps scientists predict how a molecule will react in certain situations. Pretty cool, huh?