So now let's try out the silver oxide mechanism. So guys, unlike the base catalyzed mechanism or promoted mechanism where you're making the nucleophile stronger by giving it a negative charge, it's actually kind of opposite with the silver oxide mechanism. We're not going to touch the alcohol. The alcohol is going to stay neutral. We're just going to make the leaving group such a great leaving group that it's going to end up getting attacked. Okay? So how does this happen? The way that silver oxide looks is it's an oxygen, let's just draw it right here, it's an oxygen that's attached to 2 silver atoms. Okay? And there's a pretty strong dipole where the O is really negative, okay? So the O is going to have a partial negative charge, and then these are going to have partial positives. Okay? Because the O is more electronegative than the silver. That makes sense. Remember, oxygen is way more on this side of the periodic table, and silver is like in the middle section, so it's not very electronegative. Cool?

Well, it turns out that what can happen is that it's going to make a partial bond to the X, and it's going to basically make the X more negative because it's going to attach to it, and some of that negative character is going to be donated to the X. And what that means is it's going to make this R more positive. So if I were to maybe draw it out in a line where it makes more sense, it would look like this, R with a partial bond to X, X with a partial bond to O, and then O with the 2 Ags. And the way that the specific partial charges work is that this is partial negative, which is making this partial negative because it's attaching to it, which is making the R more positive than usual. And by being super positive, it's going to basically make the O more conducive to attacking. That O is going to have more of a reason to attack because that R is more positive than usual, and then it's just going to kick off the leaving group. So what's going to happen at the end is that we're going to get an R here. Whatever R it was for the alkyl halide, we'll get an R. And then all we have to do is multiply that times 4. Okay? So you would end up doing this 4 times and getting RRRR. Okay?

Now guys, I actually doubt you're going to be responsible for this mechanism. Most likely, you just need to be able to recognize the reagents, which are silver oxide and an alkyl halide or a good leaving group. But I just wanted to throw this in there just in case, so you guys would understand a little better how the silver oxide catalyzes the reaction, the alkylation reaction. Cool? Awesome guys, so we're done with this problem. Let's go ahead and move on to the next video.