Introduction to the Curved Arrow Pushing Formalism in Organic Chemistry

To be successful in organic chemistry you need to be able to understand the flow of electrons. Since a pair of electrons forms a bond, it is important to know how electrons move from one reagent to the next. In this screencast we examine the concept of the curved arrow formalism to track how electrons move in a chemical reaction. A few general guidelines are helpful for understanding this convention. An arrow starts at a lone pair of electrons or a pi bond. The arrow ends at an positive charge or electron deficient atom or species. The arrow represents the movement of two electrons and the formation of a new bond. For every bond made, a bond has to be broken such that the convention of Lewis dot structures is obeyed. In any reaction, there is always an acid-base pair or more generally an electrophile-nucleophile pair. Try to identify these before starting with your mechanistic proposal. This screencast examines a few different common reaction scenarios such as an acid-base reaction, ester saponification, and an SN2 reaction.

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