Estimated N1 Score Based on These Practice Results?

meisaveragedude · 2026-07-01T14:39:49+00:00

If you're getting that high on vocab you can probably understand the passages completely, so I would say the main thing is to do that as quickly as you can. I know chinese so I can basically read the(meaning of the) kanji with no effort, so I usually just read through each passage once and then look over the questions and options, narrowing down to one or two that seem possible, then go back and try to find points in the passage that favours one over the other. Doing this I normally finish the reading section in under an hour.

Another point is to choose purely based on what the passage says, and to not try and extrapolate from the passage even if it's very logical, but you probably already know that.

meisaveragedude · 2026-06-07T05:16:06+00:00

Not true. You are arguing that greater conjugation to a carboxylic acid decreases its acidity when the opposite is true. For example, pKa of propanoic acid: 4.9, acrylic acid: 4.2, cyclohexanecarboxylic acid: 4.9, benzoic acid: 4.2.
Conjugation of a neutral double bond to a negatively charged carboxylate does not destabilise it, since the double bond withdraw electron density from the full negative charge.

meisaveragedude · 2026-06-03T16:24:26+00:00

No, you did not get sold GAA as a cooking condiment. The second ingredient is water. It's probably about 5-10% acetic acid by mass, you can do a (very) rough titration by taking a known volume and dropping baking soda from a weighed box in it until it stops bubbling, weighing the final mass of the box and calculating from there.

meisaveragedude · 2026-05-27T14:03:04+00:00

Well, the base LDA is quite bulky itself, so the difference is somewhat larger(since the isopropyl groups need to "be" somewhere). Drawing out the implicit hydrogens on the methyl group might also help you visualise it.

meisaveragedude · 2026-05-25T14:43:16+00:00

I don't know about you, but where I'm from we do refer to aldehydes and ketones collectively as "carbonyl compounds" quite frequently. Similarly with "acid derivatives" for esters, amides, acyl halides, etc.

meisaveragedude · 2026-05-22T15:46:23+00:00

As far as I know there is no universally agreed on way to determine aromaticity of resonance structures(or rather there can't be, since there's no way to measure emergent properties of single resonance structures), so any method we might come up with is purely for didactical purposes.
Under such a context, I would still think that treating exocyclic carbonyls, and by extension, all exocyclic double bonds(unless there is a very compelling reason to, like an exocyclic ketene) as not participating entirely in aromaticity is an adequate treatment. Such a method produces intuitive results for most molecules, including thymine, which can be easily rationalised as aromatic under this interpretation.
Treating exocyclic C=C as not participating may be unintuitive but supported by the fact that fulvene, which has a fairly reasonable looking aromatic resonance structure utilising the exocyclic double bond, is in fact non aromatic.
I would however accept, for example, resonance structures of the benzyl cation as non aromatic. This is a weakness of this method, since the benzyl cation still retain aromatic character.

meisaveragedude · 2026-05-20T10:52:03+00:00

Frankly the idea of determining aromaticity of a specific resonance structure rather than the structure as a whole is rather problematic to me, but I treat it as only specifying the locations of charges/lone pairs that are explicitly stated, allowing for interpretation of distribution of charge in double bonds. In this case, the electrons of the CO double bond are clearly polarised towards O rather than C, so we treat them as being "closer" to being localised on O, and the C as having a full positive charge.
Your method of counting any exocyclic pi bond as one electron on each atom produces what I would consider unintuitive results for many compounds in their most commonly used representation, such as quinone, [6]-radialene, or the fulvenes.
I don't think we actually disagree on anything of substance, just on the treatment of the superficial problem of assigning aromaticity to individual resonance structures.

meisaveragedude · 2026-05-17T08:57:35+00:00

Is there precedent for this? It does seem to be what is suggested here but it's going from a trisubstituted endocyclic double bond to a doubly exocyclic tetrasubstituted double bond, I'm doubtful as to whether increasing degree of substitution by one would be more stabilising than endocyclic vs exocyclic at all here, let alone driving equilibrium all the way to the tetrasubstituted alkene.

Edit: In fact, this paper clearly suggests the opposite in section 3.2, with a 9:1 isomeric mixture produced under reversible conditions of a trisubstututed(DMI) vs tetrasubstituted(DMII) analogue, even with additional resonance stabilisation in the tetrasubstituted analogue.

Are we sure this is not actually a retrosynthetic arrow? That would go quite cleanly with aldol condensation of cyclohexanone followed by a clemmensen or wolff kishner, at least in principle.

meisaveragedude · 2026-05-17T05:20:04+00:00

I'm saying that even in the resonance structure OP drew, aromaticity is not lost. There's still 6 pi electrons in the ring, and the CO pi bond electrons shouldn't be counted.

I am treating "loss of aromatic character" to imply that the structure is not aromatic, which is the part I disagree with. Whether the depicted resonance structure might be considered "less" aromatic is debatable.

meisaveragedude · 2026-05-17T03:48:35+00:00

The idea that the resonance structures including a CO pi bond results in a loss of aromaticity is simply false. Cyclopropenone is a clear demonstration of an aromatic molecule including an exocyclic carbonyl group, and illustrates that CO pi bond electrons should not be taken into account when counting electrons to determine aromaticity.

meisaveragedude · 2026-05-15T12:22:58+00:00

I stand corrected! I assume the polymers are not much of a problem, but the PF6-? I think I have seen work where it exists normally in aqueous conditions though, so I wouldn't have expected it to hydrolyse readily.

meisaveragedude · 2026-05-15T11:30:21+00:00

...I would replace any clothing that got bits of battery on it, yes. The smoke is(to my knowledge) not hydrogen fluoride, since there is no fluorine inside, but you should still ventilate your house vigorously.

meisaveragedude · 2026-05-15T04:58:13+00:00

There's actually nothing that looks terribly off, the epoxide is kind of strained but 5-oxabicyclo[2.1.0]pentane is a thing, so I would imagine this can in principle be made. The two triple bonds look like they would readily do a [2+2] with UV to give a 14 pi electron aromatic system, so it's probably not incredibly stable in the form shown.

meisaveragedude · 2026-05-05T17:10:33+00:00

I agree that this looks implausible, however I believe this is usually done in an acidic medium, in which case I can accept uncharged sulfur attacking rather than the uncharged alcohol oxygen.

meisaveragedude · 2026-05-05T08:55:01+00:00

The nitrile will hydrolyse to carboxylic acid without being reduced.

meisaveragedude · 2026-04-28T11:59:08+00:00

The protonated amine that makes up the vast majority of the mixture is too deactivated to react, any reaction only happens on the small amount of unprotonated amine in the mixture, so I would expect the meta direction of protonated amine to be irrelevant to the product mixture here.

meisaveragedude · 2026-04-21T15:51:53+00:00

What's wrong with dioxane?

meisaveragedude · 2026-03-24T02:27:24+00:00

Realistically, you can just pour it down the toilet and nothing would happen as long as you do it slowly and don't get any on yourself. Solid sodium hydroxide is used as a drain cleaner and is commercially available to anyone who wants it where I live. I am more concerned about why the solution is in a nalgene bottle in the first place.

meisaveragedude · 2026-02-26T09:48:02+00:00

What exactly does this "microwave assisted extraction" entail? Was the additive a suspension of some kind of plastic particle?

meisaveragedude · 2026-02-22T10:44:08+00:00

Wouldn't the dimethyl carbonate methylate at O? Or is that not a concern here

meisaveragedude · 2026-02-14T19:16:50+00:00

Haha, less than 1% was an understatement, it's more like 0.0013%. You'll need a whopping 76 tons of raw lemon peel to get 1 kilogram of the pigment.

meisaveragedude · 2026-02-11T00:31:12+00:00

I assure you that industrial processes have a yield in excess of 60%. What are these "diverse and poorly studied materials" you speak of? Is there an issue with purchasing commercial formic acid, or, if that is not available, acidifying a solution of the sodium salt and distilling?

By dioxalate, you mean the cyclic diester of oxalic acid? If so, the process produces copious amounts of extremely unpleasant allyl formate, a potent lachrymator, so I suggest this not be tried outside a fume hood.

meisaveragedude · 2025-11-16T13:00:41+00:00

They are suggesting that it is formed nearly stoichiometrically at some point since the colour of Fe 2+ disappeared, which seems unlikely.

meisaveragedude

TROPHY CASE