Alkyl iodides are synthesized in the Finkelstein reaction by reacting alkyl chlorides or bromides with NaI in dry acetone. NaCl or NaBr formed is precipitated, facilitating the forward reaction according to Le Chatelier’s Principle.

The carbon-oxygen bond in phenols has partial double bond character, making it stronger than a single bond. This poses a challenge for its breakage, rendering the earlier methods ineffective for the preparation of aryl halides.

Chiral objects, like hands, are non-superimposable on their mirror images, while achiral objects, like spheres and cubes, can be superimposed onto their mirror images.

Molecular asymmetry, arising from the non-superimposability of mirror images due to an asymmetric carbon, is responsible for the optical activity observed in organic compounds, where the mirror images rotate plane-polarized light in equal magnitude but opposite direction.

In 1874, J. Van’t Hoff and C. Le Bel independently proposed that if all substituents around a central carbon are different, the resulting molecule is non-superimposable with its mirror image, leading to the concept of an asymmetric carbon or stereocentre ...