Resumen de Six Impossible Mechanisms Before Breakfast: Arrow Pushing as an Instructional Device in Inorganic Chemistry
In a recent article by the authors, the suggestion was made that arrow pushing, a widely used tool in organic chemistry, could also be profitably employed in the teaching of introductory inorganic chemistry. A number of relatively simple reactions were used to illustrate this thesis, raising the question whether the same approach might rationalize a broader range of main-group element reactions that are commonly included in descriptive inorganic texts. This question is answered here in the affirmative, based on analyses of six reactions (in a nod to Alice in Wonderland) that to the uninitiated would appear puzzling to near-impenetrable as exercises in arrow pushing. The examples chosen strongly suggest that the arrow-pushing approach is applicable to the great majority of reactions involving molecular p-block compounds.
