Alright. So let's go ahead and start off with F. I have 2 charges. I look at the side with the highest bonding preference. Carbon can make 4 bonds. Oxygen can make 2 bonds. Which one is the one with the higher bonding preference? Oxygen. So, I'm going to look at that charge. So, you should have picked that that one is also going to be a very strong electrophile. Just so you guys know, I put these molecules here for a reason. A happens to be the most important electrophile of Organic Chemistry 1 and F happens to be the most important electrophile of Organic Chemistry 2. If you just know these 2 electrophiles, you're going to be, like, set for Organic Chemistry 1 and 2. The reason is because in Organic Chemistry 1 we're talking all about alkyl halides, what they do. And then in Organic Chemistry 2 we talk about carbonyl chemistry. We spend entire, like, 4 or 5 chapters just talking about electrophiles. So just a little preview. Now let's go on to H.
For H, I had lithium. Lithium can make how many bonds? Only 1. It's like hydrogen. Hydrogen is happy with 1 bond because it's in that first column. Okay? Then Carbon, once again, likes to have 4. So which one has the higher bonding preference? Carbon. So, I only look at this charge. That's a negative charge. That means this is going to be a nucleophile. Isn't that cool? So this is actually a molecule called an organometallic. Sounds so scary, right? Organometallic. What it just means is you have an organo or an organic part, which is the carbon, and you have a metal which is lithium. Remember lithium is a metal. So, organometallics are actually really common nucleophiles. And later on in this course, we're going to be using these all the time as really important nucleophiles. Cool? Awesome.
So, I've got the last one and I just want to tell you guys really quickly, water is an exception. Water can act as both. Okay? Because water, as you guys know, it has a dipole. Okay? But, I mean, basically what it has is it has these negative electrons, so it can accept electrons. Okay? I mean, it can give away electrons, but it can also accept electrons. Water is kind of neutral. So what that means is that water is going to be that one compound that's always going to be able to react as either a nucleophile or an electrophile depending on what the other substance is. Okay? So, I just want to say that water is kind of an exception. You can't tell if it's going to be a nucleophile or an electrophile until you see the other reagent and see how that one's reacting with it. Okay? Cool.
So with that said, I hope you guys are understanding why molecules react and how, in general terms, nucleophiles and electrophiles behave. And now, what I want to do in the next part is to talk about actually drawing out what these reactions look like. So let's go ahead and go for it.
