Title
Introduction
Other Methods
Precedents
Why we were doing this chemistry
Known Methodology
Discovery
Mechanism
Summary of Results
The NMR of some incompletely dried (but distilled) epoxide
revealed something rather startling to us - 13C NMR and GC/MS quickly
confirmed these peaks to be those of napthalene! (see below)
With further experimentation we were able to drive the raction to
completion by employing a 10 fold excess of o-bromofluorobenzene and
Mg to furan. Just as the key to identifying the cause of the reduced
yields of endoxide lay the detection of the volatile naphthalene, so
too did the key to understanding the mechanism lie in the
identificaton of the by-products of reaction.