Question #019dd

1 Answer
Oscar L.
Apr 14, 2016

Only (C) is fully correct.

Explanation:

As you can see, steam typically reacts with alkenes by adding #H# on one double-bonded atom and #OH# on the other. But there are two possible choices for which atom gets the single hydrogen atom and which gets the #OH# group. In some cases like (A) there is a perference (the Markovnikov rule), but the only sure way to get 100% of one product is to have the double bond in the middle of the molecule so that the two possible molecules are the same by symmetry. (C) does that.

Related questions
See all questions in Collision Theory
Impact of this question
1490 views around the world
You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License