(A true story.) A major university was designated as a national nuclear magnetic resonance center by the National Science Foundation. Several large superconducting instruments were being installed when a government safety inspector appeared and demanded to know what provisions were being made to handle the nuclear waste produced by these instruments. Assume you are the manager of the NMR center, and offer an explanation that could be understood by a nonscientist.

A small pilot plant was adding bromine across the double bond of but-2-ene to make 2,3-dibromobutane. A controller malfunction allowed the reaction temperature to rise beyond safe limits. A careful distillation of the product showed that several impurities had formed, including the one having the NMR spectra that appear below. Determine its structure, and assign the peaks to the protons in your structure.

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Different types of protons and carbons in alkanes tend to absorb at similar chemical shifts, making structure determination difficult. Explain how the ¹³C NMR spectrum, including the DEPT technique, would allow you to distinguish among the following four isomers.

The three isomers of dimethylbenzene are commonly named ortho-xylene, meta-xylene, and para-xylene. These three isomers are difficult to distinguish using proton NMR, but they are instantly identifiable using ¹³C NMR.

(a) Describe how carbon NMR distinguishes these three isomers.

(b) Explain why they are difficult to distinguish using proton NMR.

(a) Draw all six isomers of formula C₄H₈ (including stereoisomers).

(b) For each structure, show how many types of H would appear in the proton NMR spectrum.

(c) For each structure, show how many types of C would appear in the ¹³C NMR spectrum.

(d) If an unknown compound of formula C₄H₈ shows two types of H and three types of C, can you determine its structure from this information?

Tell precisely how you would use the proton NMR spectra to distinguish between the following pairs of compounds.

(b)

When 2-chloro-2-methylbutane is treated with a variety of strong bases, the products always seem to contain two isomers (A and B) of formula C₅H₁₀. When sodium hydroxide is used as the base, isomer A predominates. When potassium tert-butoxide is used as the base, isomer B predominates. The ¹H and ¹³C NMR spectra of A and B are given below.

(a) Determine the structures of isomers A and B.

(b) Explain why A is the major product when using sodium hydroxide as the base and why B is the major product when using potassium tert-butoxide as the base.

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