Effect of nature of substituent on strength of the acid
Answers
Now that we know how to quantify the strength of an acid or base, our next job is to gain an understanding of the fundamental reasons behind why one compound is more acidic or more basic than another. This is a big step: we are, for the first time, taking our knowledge of organic structure and applying it to a question of organic reactivity. Many of the ideas that we’ll see for the first here will continue to apply throughout the book as we tackle many other organic reaction types.
A: Periodic trends
First, we will focus on individual atoms, and think about trends associated with the position of an element on the periodic table. We’ll use as our first models the simple organic compounds ethane, methylamine, and ethanol, but the concepts apply equally to more complex biomolecules with the same functionalities, for example the side chains of the amino acids alanine (alkane), lysine (amine), and serine