Russian chemist Alexander Zaitsev formulated the Zaitsev rule in 1875. The rule states that in dehydrohalogenation reactions, the preferred product is the alkene with the greater number of alkyl groups attached to the doubly bonded carbon atoms.

b-Elimination involves the removal of a hydrogen atom from the b-carbon and a halogen atom from the a-carbon in a haloalkane. This process forms an alkene as a product.

The hydrolysis of optically active 2-bromobutane leads to the formation of (±)-butan-2-ol, illustrating racemisation with a mixture of products having the same and opposite configurations.

In SN₁ reactions of optically active alkyl halides, racemisation occurs due to the planar (achiral) nature of the sp² hybridized carbocation intermediate. The nucleophile can attack from either side of the plane, resulting in a mixture of products with the ...

In SN₂ reactions of optically active alkyl halides, the product exhibits inverted configuration compared to the reactant, as the nucleophile attaches itself on the side opposite to the halogen atom.

A racemic mixture is represented by prefixing dl or (±) before the name, such as (±) butan-2-ol. It signifies a mixture containing equal proportions of enantiomers, resulting in zero optical rotation due to cancellation of rotations from each isomer.

Stereoisomers that are non-superimposable mirror images of each other are called enantiomers, which possess identical physical properties but differ in the rotation of plane-polarized light.

Butan-2-ol is a chiral molecule because it has four different groups attached to the tetrahedral carbon, resulting in non-superimposability on its mirror image.

The presence of a single asymmetric carbon, or stereocentre, in a molecule is an aid in recognizing chirality. Molecules with this feature are often chiral, leading to non-superimposability of their mirror images and optical activity.

Chirality in molecules refers to the property of being non-superimposable on their mirror images. Chiral molecules exhibit optical activity, while achiral molecules are optically inactive.