A greener, microwave-assisted Wittig reaction has been developed for the second-semester organic teaching laboratory. Utilizing this microwave technique, a variety of styrene derivatives have been successfully synthesized from aromatic aldehydes in good yields (41-68%). The reaction not only occurs under neat reaction conditions, but also employs…

A computational experiment is described for the organic chemistry laboratory that allows students to estimate the relative strengths of the intramolecular hydrogen bonds of usnic and isousnic acids, two related lichen secondary metabolites. Students first extract and purify usnic acid from common lichens and obtain [superscript 1]H NMR and IR…