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Ng?c Anh Thái

Conformation of six-membered ring constituting a bridged compound

Benit Black  Follow

Norbornane, as mentioned by the other answers forces the cyclohexane ring into a prototypical "boat" conformation. The bridging carbon creates two five-membered rings in the low-energy envelope or "pucker" conformation:

enter image description here

Put simply, the 1-carbon bridging system creates a very rigid system. While there are many eclipsed C-H interactions, changing conformation would require stretching bonds or angles - distortions that are much higher in energy.

In larger bicycloalkanes, like bicyclo[2.2.2]octane, there is now more conformational flexibility to adopt a twist-boat conformation:

enter image description here

Notice that from the bridgehead carbons, there are many eclipsing interactions. In Avogadro, I can watch this all-boat conformation twist into the twist-boat:

enter image description here

While it's important to do conformational analysis for every molecule (small interactions can change the low-energy conformer), I would guess most of the larger bicycloalkanes to adopt twist-boat configurations.

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Gordon Braddock  Follow
So which conformation is the more stable one for bicyclo[2.2.2]octane?More
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Jim Coombe  Follow
Relative energy of hydrocarbon conformers is reasonably tricky question, involving among others long range weak interactions, dynamic effects and symmetry. Thats why I (as computational chemist) tried to avoid answer based on calculations. BTW, how large is the energy difference of those?More
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Gerald Cadwell  Follow
Its twist-boat - you can see the twist in the final image (of bicycle[2.2.2]octane).More
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Cars and Trucks  Follow

According to structure determined by electron diffraction, norbornane is present in bridged boat conformation. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja01014a032, see Figure.

Figure 10 of the article

Norbornane and its derivatives are often used for studying effect of equatorial and axial substitution of cyclohexane and is considered rigid. Therefore, I don't expect significant population of the second conformer you sketched.

Edit:For the [2.2.2]bicyclooctane (not the lactone mentioned in question), both conformers are known in crystalographic database.

Bear in mind, that bicyclooctane constist of three hypothetical cyclohexanes, possibly equivalent by symmetry.

For any compound of interest, you should find enough data in crystallographic database, but I'd expect all reasonable conformations to exist.

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John Petricks  Follow
Thats not the full answer. Is that conformation abundant in other bicyclic systems containing a cyclohexane ring like bicyclo[2.2.2]octane?More
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Fred Baer  Follow
I need solid evidence because there are contradictory answers here.More
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Gary Viveiros  Follow
@Marko If you need solid evidence, than find it yourself.More
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Jeffrey Werbock  Follow
Which one is lower in energy?More
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Jerzy Micha? Pawlak  Follow
I need for one of these answers so I can accept it. Geoff said that the most stable conformation for bicyclo[2.2.2]octane is twist-boat, XuMuk said that it is boat and you didnt give a definite answer on that matter.More
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