INTER AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO PRE-LAB

METROPOLITAN CAMPUS
MOLECULAR
Faculty of Sciences and Technology
Department of Natural Sciences MODELING 2
33 points
1
1
Name: _________________________Student ID: ____________ Date: _______

1. Explain briefly and clearly the following concepts.

a. Potential energy of a conformation. (2)

b. Dihedral angle (in chemical terms, nothing to do with planes) in relation to

the rotation of a bond for the molecule of interest. Present an example to
illustrate the concept. (3)

c. What are the van der Waals interaction forces in a conformation? Provide an
illustration: (4)

d. What is the steric strain or hindrance in a conformation? Make your best

drawing to illustrate the concept? (4)

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e. What is the torsional strain of a conformation due to? Make a drawing to
illustrate the concept. (4)

f. What do you understand as 1,3-diaxial interaction? Illustrate with an example.

(2)

2.
a. Based on what you answered in the previous question, estimate the relative
stabilities of the 4 major conformations of n-pentane by drawing the
corresponding Newman projections in decreasing order according to their
stability. Place the most stable or of lowest energy to the left. (4)

b. Explain the difference in energy between the most stable and the least stable
conformation. (3)

c. What is the difference in stability between the two staggered conformations?

(3)

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d. Label the axes and plot the curve that illustrates the energy changes between
the n-pentane conformations if the energies of the different conformers are
5.52, 6.53, 8.78 and 10.66 kcal / mol. (4)

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