Hey, everyone. So in this video, let's take a look at E2 reactions of benzylic hydrogens. Now, we're going to say here, due to the higher acidity of benzylic beta hydrogens, we're going to say that elimination products predominate. And we're going to say alkene products of such eliminations are conjugated and are stabilized by resonance. So, if we take a look here, we're talking about the E2 reactions of benzylic halides.

So we're going to say here that we have this structure here, and we're going to say that this is alpha and this is beta. These beta benzylic hydrogens are acidic because of resonance. Here, we're using RO^- which represents the generic form of a strong base, and it's dissolved in an alcohol solvent. What's going to happen here following E2, this strong base would come in, remove one of these beta hydrogens, the bond would break, fall here, and kick out the chlorine. This would create our alkene product.

So we'd form this double bond here as our major product. Another thing that could happen, but it would be the minor, is a substitution because this is a primary alkyl halide. And remember, primary alkyl halides are susceptible to SN2 reactions when we use a negative nucleophile. So, another thing that could happen here instead of this alkene product forming, this could come in, hit this carbon, and kick out the Cl. This would be our minor product but it's still a possibility.

So we'd have an OR group here. So this is the structure we'd make as our minor. But again, remember due to the higher acidity of beta, benzylic beta hydrogens, elimination products are more likely to occur because what we make is something that's more conjugated.

We have more double bond, single bond, double bond. Conjugation leads to greater stability. All of this is helped by the idea of resonance. Alright? So just keep that in mind when you're looking at questions similar to this one.