spirochete27

The difference between the CH2 peaks in an acid or an ester probably would not be that different. However the acid would have a distinctly different IR spectrum and you would also see a (possibly very broad) peak in the NMR for the acidic hydrogen very far downfield.

Strong/Weak and hard/soft are two totally different concepts. Strength and weakness of an acid is measured by its thermodynamic tendency to give up protons. Google "hard soft acid base theory" for an explanation of the latter. HSABT can be a kinetic concept, while strong/weak is mainly a thermodynamic descriptor measured by the equilibrium constant Ka.

Perhaps you could consult the MSDS and list potential hazards and toxicity associated with its use? Perhaps you could research any environmental hazards associated with it?

NaCl acts as a source of Chloride (Cl minus), not chlorine radical.

You will really need to take a few courses to see. Luckily the first year of a chemistry major and the first year of a physics major are not that different, except for general chemistry you would take as a chem major. Also before you decide completely I would take at least the first semester of organic chemistry. Do you love math? Physics will be incredibly heavy on math no matter what you do, whereas chemistry there are many options that are relatively light on math, and some that have virtually none (synthetic organic chemistry being the main option if you want to forget about calculus forever).

Haha let's try scaling that one up.

As a general rule, the relative energy of orbitals in organic molecules goes sigma<pi<n<pi star<sigma star. Thus in alkenes the homo will be a pi orbital and the lumo will be a pi star orbital. This ordering is generally true because antibonding orbital is always destabilized slightly more than a bonding orbital is stabilized. So antibonding orbitals are roughly a mirror image of their corresponding bonding orbitals. The exact relative energies are found through very complex calculations using powerful computers, and even then the numbers are often wrong. You would not be expected to know that.

I feel like March's is a great book for reference, but a terrible book to actually learn from. The most highly recommended book I know of for learning physical/mechanistic organic chemistry is "Modern Physical Organic Chemistry" by anslyn. "The art of writing reasonable organic reaction mechanisms" by Grossman is a good book for first year graduate students and is more of a tutorial than Modern Physical. For the more synthetic side of things "Advanced Organic Part B" by Carey is a good one. For pericyclic reactions Fleming's book is a fantastic starting point.

Carboxylic acids can form intermolecular hydrogen bond dimers with eachother that are held together quite strongly by resonance assisted hydrogen bonds. If you deprotonate and make an anion this can no longer happen. That's one contribution. But in general converting organic compounds to salts will make them more soluble in water.

The compound you're describing is actually different from a simple alkene or ether. It is actually an enol ether. This is actually a single functional group rather than two separate ones.

Methanol and water both show up at 4.8 ppm: http://www.chem.ucla.edu/~webspectra/NotesOnSolvents.html

Are you looking for a solvent that will dissolve table salt? In the wikipedia article about sodium chloride there is a table listing its solubility in various solvents. Methanol and glycerin both look likle decent options. I'm not sure which one will give you a green color.

First of all, I would question your logic explaing why triethyl orthoformate is supposedly more acidic than ethanol. Most carboxylic acids are more stable than most alcohols, but here we're dealing with a type of ester of a carboxylic acid. Totally different situation. I could not find the pKa of triethyl orthoformate from a google search but I doubt it's more acidic than ethanol. Somebody please correct me if they can find the pKa anywhere. Also, there are more factors that effect acidity than just the one you named. You're correct that more acidic molecules have more stable conjugate bases, but there are many factors that effect the stability of a conjugate base.

I wouldn't think the difference would be very large, but it's probably due to steric effects.

Could you do a hoffman elimination to form an alkene followed by treatment with MCPBA to make an epoxide? I'm thinking maybe there would be some way to selectively alkylate the less sterically hindered amine.

What Knumbnuts is getting at is that you possible have a case of nucleophilic aromatic subsitution going on, where an equivalent of nucleophilic "H minus" is displacing fluoride on the ring. This type of displacement usually only works when the halogen leaving group is ortho or para to an electron withdrawing group. Have you tried using a weaker reducing agent? I know sodium cyanoborohydride is commonly used in reductive amination because it is easily strong enough to reduce an iminium, but less likely to reduce a ketone or aldehyde. Another possibility would be to try using less sodium borohydride. I don't know how many equivalents you are using now.