THE STORY OF ETHYL AND GRIGNARD
By Eric "Dynamo" Daymo
Ethyl and Grignard met at the H Bar - a popular spot for continuous
operators to hang out. Etyl noticed Grignard as soon as he transported
himself in. At first, their attraction was only Van der Waals, but after
Grignard bought Ethyl some ethanol, the conversation became quite friendly.
The couple fell deeper into the potential wall of love. Grignard
felt his rigit rotor gain a quanta and he knew it was time to operate on
Ethyl. "Would you commute with me, Ethyl? My Mercedes Benzyl is parked
right outside." Ethyl was excited about the opportunity to hybridize with
the best molecule in the bar and left without hesitation.
The reaction proceeded at a fast rate, and Grignard was quick to
distill the small talk down to the synthesis that was at hand. He exposed
his nucleophile and asked Ethyl to remove her protecting group. Ethyl was
taken aback by his lowering of the energy barrier. "Shouldn't we atke
procautions against side reactions?" Grignard laughed - he knew the
conditions were right and no unwanted products would be formed.
Ethyl removed her protcting group and exposed her lone pairs.
Grignard, who to this point was in a ground state, realized the potential
and entered an excited state. The transition shocked Ethyl, who moaned,
"I've never seen such a long alkyl group before." Grignard smiled with
pride, but in his mind he woried whether or not his long chain would cause
steric hindrances. Ethyl and Grignard maneuvered near each other without
any hydrephobic tendencies. Ethyl's feelings were basic: she wanted
maxinum overlap.
Grignard backsided attacked Ethyl, taking advantage of her fully
exposed carbo-cation. "Ooh," Ethyl said, "no solvent molecule has ever
done that to me before. All they ever did was deprotinate me - I was left
all alone feeling rather negative."
Grignard added himself to her, but he never equilibrated and was
forced to reverse his reaction.
"Don't tease me with your carbo-anion...Complete the mechanism." When
Grignard backside attacked for the second time, he could feel the
hyper-conjugation taking place. Grignard maneuvered her lone pairs and
pushed his electraons deep into her conjugated pi system. Ethyl shrieked
at the thought of this un-natural anti-bonding configuration, but Grignard
explained that what they were doing was symmetrically allowed. Afterall,
this was a hetero-lytic reaction.
Now that the initialization step was complete, the long series of
propagation steps started. Ethyl stated feeling rather radicalm and her
new reactivity caused Grignard to vibrate faster. Grignard could begin to
feel a coupling between his vibration and his rotaion. Obviously, he was
dealig with no simple basis set, for she was corrently fully orthogonal.
Grignard whispered to Ethyl, "You better watch our because I'm going to
mormalize you." Ethyl reminded Grignard that she coulent be diagonalized
like any other molecule, and her wave function was too complicated for
even the most sophisticated algorithm to elucidate,
They were both happy until Grignard asked Ethyl if she'd mind if
he had her spectra taken. Tht though of being probed by an
electrmagnetic field horrified her. If that wasn't all, the spectra would
likely be published in one of those chemistry magazines... and her pi
system and lone pairs would be exposed for all to see.
Ethyl entered a new resonance structure, shifted a negative charge
to her carboxyl group, and made further conjugation by Grignard
unfavorable. To make matters worse, Grignard forgot Ethy's IUPAC name!
Ethyl put her protecting group back on and kicked Grignard our her beaker.
As Grignard walked back to his Benzyl he realized that he was a
little dehydrated. The night was still young, so he convected himself back
to the H Bar, where he continued to operate frictionlessly on other
hermitian functions.
