What type of product is formed on reaction of an alcohol with Na metal?

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Accepted Answer

Welcome everyone. Our next problem says, determine the product when phenol reacts with potassium metal. So we need to think about the structure of phenol and the type of reactions it has. So we have our benzene ring with its delocalized pie bonds and then we have no group. Well, when we think about it, the lone pairs on this oxygen can participate in this de localization of electrons. And that means that this oxygen actually gets a partial positive charge, which as we know is rather unusual, but that makes phenol acidic. It is likely to give up a proton, it's likely to give up its hydrogen as a proton due to the partial positive charge on the oxygen atom. And then in addition, once it is an eye on, so we'll draw our benzene ring again. Once it's o minus the negative charge on that oxygen is stabilized by that de localization. So it's stabilized by residents. So with that in mind, when we have our phenol and it reacts with potassium, the phenol is going to pretty easily lose its proton. And as we said, that negative charge on oxygen will be stabilized. So we'll have the ion here with O minus and it will form an ionic bond with K plus. As we recall, potassium pretty easily gives up that electron being a metal. So we just need to balance our equation here. Since our phenol gave up a hydrogen, this reaction produces hydrogen gas, but hydrogen gas gets produced in the form of H two. So we need to add a two coefficient in front of everything else here to balance out our equation. So the product when phenol reacts with potassium metal would be the ionic compound, potassium thin oxide and hydrogen gas. See you in the next video.

What type of product is formed on reaction of an alcohol with Na metal?

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Key Concepts

Alcohols

Sodium Metal Reactivity

Alkoxides