organic final

• when a carbonyl group is broken the attack centre is now tetrahedral which creates a stereogenic centre so a racemic mixture of R/S enantiomers will be produced and there is no facial selectivity
• aldehydes provide little steric hinderance during nucleophilic attack
• there is no leaving group for aldehydes because H- is a very bad leaving group
• ketones are more bulky so steric hindrance is a factor
• carboxylic acids do not undergo reactions in basic conditions
• bronsted acids are good proton donors
• carboxylic acid + nucleophile = acid-base reaction
• bronsted acids turn bad leaving groups into good ones
• protonated carbonyls are powerful electrophiles
• PCC and PDC and Jones reagents are oxidising agents