Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles J. MICHAEL MCBRIDE: So we've talked about the main events in NMR spectroscopy for determining structure. That is, about the chemical shift and about spin-spin splitting, that allows you to tell how many nearby nuclei there are. Today we're going to talk about some complications that make the spectrum more complicated, and perhaps more informative, in terms of high order effects, higher-order effects in spin-spin splitting. And then about using NMR to study, not structure, but to study rates. And we'll do some C-13 labeling stuff there. So spin-spin splitting with other nuclei besides protons next door, and we actually saw some of this last time with deuterium splitting, with C-13. splitting. For example, if there's a signal like this and you blow it way up by 30 times, then you can see that. What gives these things that are so far apart 126 Hz. Do you remember this from last-- what are the size of splittings you normally see for protons that are on adjacent carbons? They're the order of 7 Hz, right? Here we have got 126. What's the big thing that's going on? What makes coupling so big? It's C-13-H. In fact, 99% of the sample-- if you haven't specifically put C-13s in there, are C-12 but about 1% are C-12. So you see that. Now here's a paper from 1959, which first noted something interesting about these C13-H coupling constants, that they relate to the amount of s-character in the carbon atomic orbital that's involved in the bonds. Remember, we said that the information has to be communicated through the electrons because the action of magnets through space if you average over all angles of rotation in a liquid-- goes to zero. So you communicate through the bonds. The nice thing about... that it's so strong for JC13-H, is that C-13 has just one bond to get to the H. So it's a very short path to communicate. Now, but you remember, also, that to do that-- so that it doesn't average out as you tumble-- you have to have the electrons in an s orbital. So the hydrogen uses its s orbital, that's all it's got essentially. But carbon can use s or p. So the hybridization, as they say here, relates to the coupling constant. Because to communicate that electron must be on the C-13 nucleus. So this is a table from that paper. It gives the coupling constant in units of per second. Those were then changed to be called Hz, nowadays. So here are a bunch of different compounds and their JC13-H coupling constants. If we make a histogram of them, you see that there's a group between 120 to 140 one between 150 and 170 and another group down around 250. So there are different groups involved here. There are three different populations, we could draw the lines between them. And then if we look to see what the carbons are, that bear these hydrogens that show that splitting, we could look first at the very big ones down there. And what's special about those carbons that are splitting the hydrogens? They're triple bonded. So sp hybridization 50% s in the bond to hydrogen. The ones here, the green ones, are in aromatic systems, so they have sp squared hybridization. Except for cyclopropane. Why would it have such a high coupling constant? Why would it have a lot of s-character in the bond to hydrogen the carbon that's in the cyclopropane? Because its bonds normally are tetrahedral-sp cubed but when you try to make a smaller angle, more p-character in the bonds to the other carbons, therefore more s-character coming out to the hydrogens. So we can actually see that hybridization change in the NMR. And then these other are normal methyl groups, I speak sp cubed hybridized carbons. So here in NMR, we have direct evidence for this hybridization stuff we talked about last semester. So it's sp, sp squared, sp cubed. Now here's a subtle point. Perhaps we shouldn't be spending time on it, but it's so interesting. And I suspect the curious among you may have wondered about this. Because we talked about coupling goes through the bonds. So from H to C to C to H. How about H to C to H? That's a shorter path. So methane, if you're looking at one hydrogen, how many other hydrogens would you think it would be coupled to? Three. And they could be in 1:3:3:1. So you should see a quartet for a proton of CH4. But you don't, you just see a single sharp peak. So where did the splitting go? And this is related to what we talked about last time, where a book said the splitting constant is zero. And I said that's not true, the splitting constant is high, maybe 10. But it's not observable. So why is it, why don't you see quartets for CH4? OK, so here's one of these spectra-- actually if you go up here and you can click on that and get taken to the website of Chem 220 where they have problems. I'll work one problem later in the class, if we have time. But there are others you can practice on there. So this is a compound, and I'll tell you its answer. It's cinnamic acid. It's related to the adelhyde related to this acid, cinnamaldehyde is the smell of cinnamon. So what do we expect when we look at the proton spectrum-- this is the proton spectrum of it-- what do we expect? Well, notice that we can draw resonance structures, which will put positive charge on the carbon with that hydrogen, so remove electron density from that hydrogen. Or from that one, or that one, or that one. So those all should be shifted downfield relative to where they would otherwise be, relative to the ones that aren't blue. When we look at the compound, then, we see these really complicated peaks in here. We throw up our hands trying to understand that. And then we see here two doublets really nice, sharp, clean things. So what do you think the two doublets are out here? Let's ignore that bit for the time being and talk about these two doublets. Which protons do you think those come from? Which one is this? OK, let me start going around the compound. The OH is way down further. We're not showing that. OK, so I go down. I come to this one. What do you think that is? STUDENT: The one near the COOH. PROFESSOR: No, that's the one up here. This is where double bonds normally come. Then you come here, and that one has a hydrogen on double- bonded carbon, but it's down here because it's has lost electron density. Remember we drew a resonance structure where the blue ones were more positive. And then here, we have hydrogens that are on the benzene ring, shifted down this way because of the ring shift, the aromatic ring current that we talked about last time. And now there's a group of three and a group of two. These are positive and are shifted down. That's the group of two. The group of three here is these two, plus this one. Which would be shifted down because it's positive, but up because it's far from this sp squared carbon. Let's not worry about why that is. But at any rate, that's the benzene ones. But that's not what we're going to talk about here. What we're going to talk about is the clean signals. Here and here. Now this is measured with a magnetic field of 7.05 Tesla. That means it's a 300 MHz spectrometer. So instead of using parts per million down here, we could