Question #019dd

1 Answer
Oscar L.
Apr 14, 2016

Only (C) is fully correct.

Explanation:

As you can see, steam typically reacts with alkenes by adding #H# on one double-bonded atom and #OH# on the other. But there are two possible choices for which atom gets the single hydrogen atom and which gets the #OH# group. In some cases like (A) there is a perference (the Markovnikov rule), but the only sure way to get 100% of one product is to have the double bond in the middle of the molecule so that the two possible molecules are the same by symmetry. (C) does that.

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