how chemical transformations occur in labs

Question

For example how a H2O molecule can be transformed to HO and how a H2O can be transformed to H2O2

Is this controlled in real life or are just text books examples?

In: 2

Answer 1

Making a specific chemical reaction depend on what we call “reaction conditions”. These conditions are different depending on what specific reaction we are trying to make happen. For example, I work in a lab where we synthesize a bunch of different kinds of steroid compounds. Steroids are based on cholesterol molecules, which we modify as we want to make whatever specific compound we desire. We employ a wide range of techniques in order to carefully select which part of the molecule we want to change, and then we verify that we did this properly using a very sensitive instrument called an NMR.