From the lecture hall to the laboratory: the pinacol rearrangement

A puzzle-oriented laboratory excercise increases the thinking skills and problem solving capacity of organic chemistry students. The excercise helps them to learn the techniques of reflux, and of simple and fractional distillation. The basis of the experiment is the pinacol rearrangement of 2,3-dimethyl-2,3-butanediol during its acid-catalyzed reaction. Students determine the structure of reactants and products on the basis of the infrared and nuclear magnetic resonance spectral data.