This lesson illustrates the role of deuterium substitution in simplifying the NMR spectrum of compounds comprising labile protons. One method employed is the use of deuterium. Amongst the three isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium (2H) has a nucleus composed of one proton and one neutron. When the D2O solvent is added to a pure dry ethanol solution, its labile proton is substituted with deuterium.

In the early 1900s, English chemist Frederick Soddy realized that an element could have atoms with different masses that were chemically indistinguishable. These different types are called isotopes — atoms of the same element that differ in mass. Isotopes differ in mass because they have different numbers of neutrons but are chemically identical because they have the same number of protons. Soddy was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1921 for this discovery.
An isotope containing more...

Hydrogen BondsHydrogen bonds are weak attractions between atoms that have formed other chemical bonds. One of these atoms is electronegative, like oxygen, and has a partial negative charge. The other is a hydrogen atom that has bonded with another electronegative atom and has a partial positive charge.Hydrogen Bonds Control the World!Because hydrogen has very weak electronegativity when it binds with a strongly electronegative atom, such as oxygen or nitrogen, electrons in the bond are...

A hydrogen bond is formed when a weakly positive hydrogen atom already bonded to one electronegative atom (for example, the oxygen in the water molecule) is attracted to another electronegative atom from another polar molecule, such as water (H2O), hydrogen fluoride (HF), or ammonia (NH3). The huge electronegativity difference between the H atom (2.1) and the atom to which it is bonded (4.0 for an F atom, 3.5 for an O atom, or 3.0 for an N atom), combined with the very small size of an H atom...

The process of converting very light nuclei into heavier nuclei is also accompanied by the conversion of mass into large amounts of energy, a process called fusion. The principal source of energy in the sun is a net fusion reaction in which four hydrogen nuclei fuse and ultimately produce one helium nucleus and two positrons.
A helium nucleus has a mass that is 0.7% less than that of four hydrogen nuclei; this lost mass is converted into energy during the fusion. This reaction produces about...

A chemical symbol is an abbreviation used to indicate an element or an atom of an element. For example, the symbol for mercury is Hg. The same symbol is used to indicate one atom of mercury (microscopic domain) or to label a container of many atoms of the element mercury (macroscopic domain).
Some symbols are derived from the common English name of the element; others are abbreviations of the name in another language — Latin, Greek or German. For example, the symbol for aluminum (common name)...