Guys, now we're going to discuss what might be the most important addition reaction of this entire section, and that's called acid-catalyzed hydration. Keep in mind that of the 3 methods to make alcohol that we're going to learn in this section, acid-catalyzed hydration is considered the first of 3 ways to make alcohols by addition. So let's go ahead and get started. So guys, acid-catalyzed hydration is more similar than it is different to the addition reactions that we've learned so far. The intermediate is the same as the ones that we've seen so far, which is that it is a carbocation. Okay? Now if the intermediate is a carbocation, what do you think that says about its ability to do shifts or rearrangements? Totally. This thing is going to rearrange all the time, okay? Now that could actually be a bad thing because remember that rearrangements lead to unpredictable outcomes for our reactions. It could lead to a reaction or product that we weren't expecting. So we may actually see that the ability to rearrange is a drawback that we have to fix later on, but we'll get there later, okay?
Now, one thing about carbocations and their stereochemistry is that they're very unpredictable. Carbocations, remember, they're trigonal planar, so they can be attacked either from the front or from the back. Okay. And what that means is that the stereochemistry of our products is really still going to be unknown. Unknown because we don't know where it's hitting. There may be several chiral centers produced. So I don't want to say anything more than just unknown. There's usually a big mixture of chiral products in these reactions, okay? And as we said earlier, acid-catalyzed hydration or simply known as hydration is the first of 3 methods to make what? Alcohol. So we know that my product is going to be an alcohol. Now is this going to be a Markovnikov alcohol or an anti-Markovnikov alcohol? Well, it turns out that in this section we're going to learn how to do both. We're going to learn how to do Mark and anti-Mark alcohols. But hydration is definitely a Markovnikov reaction. It's a Markovnikov alcohol because your carbocation is always going to want to form in its most stable location.
Before we go to the general reaction, let's just read off a few bullet points because they will be helpful for us. Now notice that our reagents are H2O and H2SO4. Now put more generally, that's the most likely way to see it. But it's simply going to be H2O with some form of acid. Recall that when I talked about dehydration, I said dehydration was H2O and H2SO4 as well. So actually, the reagents haven't changed at all since dehydration. They're the same. So you might be wondering, Johnny, well, how can I tell if the reagents are exactly the same? How can I tell if it's going to be in hydration or dehydration? How do you know? Well, you look at what you're starting with. Since you're starting with a double bond, that means that a double bond is going to hydrate to an alcohol. So it's the same reagents as acid-catalyzed dehydration, except with a starting double bond instead of starting with an alcohol. All right. Cool. So you look not at the reagents but you look at the starting molecule to know if you're going to go into hydration or dehydration. Just think about hydration means you're adding water. And look what we just did. We're adding a water. We're going to add an H and we're going to add an O. So that means we're hydrating the double bond. We're adding a water to it.
Now in terms of the general mechanism, it's also going to be very predictable. It's going to be the same as hydrohalogenation, which you guys might remember is just the simple reaction of a double bond with HX, which is really our example reaction for addition. So it's the same general mechanism as that except that we're going to use water as the nucleophile. So instead of using X- and attacking X-, we're going to attack water instead.
And then guys, remember I stated this when we talked about other like dehydration. But remember that every acid-catalyzed mechanism always is very predictable. It always starts with something and it always ends with something. If the name is acid-catalyzed, that means it always begins with protonation and it ends with deprotonation. That's because if it's acid-catalyzed, that means you're always going to put a proton on something and at the end, since it's a catalyst, you have to take that proton off so you can regenerate your acid.
So let's just look at the general reaction here. The general reaction states that a double bond with water and acid is going to do what? Well, notice that this is my Markovnikov site and this is what I would call my anti-Markovnikov site. So this is my mark site. So even without knowing the mechanism, because I told you guys all the things about the properties of the reaction, I can predict that my product is going to look like what? I'm going to have a Markovnikov alcohol, and alcohol in the most substituted place. And then the H of the water will be in the least substituted place. So I'm adding water. I'm adding H2O. But the O forms mark and the H forms on the other position.
Now the last thing you might be wondering, Johnny, So I'm going to assume that you're wondering what's up with squiggly line? Because it looks super weird, right? You may have not seen that before. You may have forgotten what that was. Just remember, guys, if you see a squiggly line that means that it's unknown stereochemistry. It means that it could be towards the front, it could be towards the back. You're not expected to draw all the stereo isomers because that could be a huge burden. All you need to know is that the H went somewhere, okay. And that's why I put the stereochemistry unknown because there could be up to 4 different stereo isomers on these things. So I don't think you're expected to draw all of them just to know that several could form, okay? Awesome, guys. So that's it for this. So then let's move on to the next problem where we're going to draw the mechanism at length.
