A bit of info
A cross aldol reaction is a aldol reaction between 2 different aldehydes (or even ketones).
The situation you are stuck with
You have aldehydes (all of them ) with you on your lab desk, and a large container having in front of you. Without your knowledge you pour all the aldehydes into the large container with the alkali.
Lets make it hypothetical
Now you have to find the no. of all possible aldol condensation products that takes place between these aldehydes.
Note: DO NOT consider stereoisomers
all substituents have atleast one alpha-hydrogen.
Feel this is easier , then try this problem
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
Choose the carbanion for the nucleophilic attack in n ways. The aldehyde to be attacked can be chosen in n − 1 ways as we require cross-aldol products. So, total number of cross-aldol products is given by n ( n − 1 ) For n = 1 0 0 0 , the answer comes out to be 9 9 9 0 0 0