Conformational Energy and Molecular Mechanics - Lecture 33

Explore the fundamentals of conformational energy and molecular mechanics in this 48-minute lecture from Yale University's Freshman Organic Chemistry course. Delve into the historical context of cyclohexane illustrations and the development of conformational analysis. Examine conformational relationships in cyclohexane structures and visualize axial-equatorial interconversion. Analyze the conformational energies of ethane, propane, and butane through quantitative considerations and animations. Discover how molecular mechanics serves as an alternative to quantum mechanics for estimating energies, requiring thousands of parameters for accuracy. Learn how this empirical approach assigns strain to specific sources like bond stretching, bending, twisting, and van der Waals interactions. The lecture covers topics from Ernst Mohr's 1918 cyclohexane illustrations to the application of strain estimation in bonds, providing a comprehensive overview of conformational analysis and molecular mechanics principles.