The Newman Projection

Let's have some fun with organic chemistry today ^-^. Organic chemistry requires a lot of 3-D imagination, if you can see it in your head, you're basically well off!
Well, let's try a Newman Projection project! How about our friend butane (C4H10)?

"Let's look at it from that this point of view...what a beautiful molecule"

Now let's get some of the basics down before we start with the masterpiece. We need to know two kinds of formations: Staggered and Eclipsed; and also two kinds of strains: Torsional Strain and Steric Strain! (is this a foreign language lesson?)!

Here's my Staggered formation: as you can see all the atoms are not lined up, they're as far away from each other as possible. This molecule also has Steric Strain (an increase in Energy atoms are forced together) no Torsional Strains though...hmm why? let's see our next formation.

There we go, our Eclipsed formation: like the solar eclipse, get it? They're on top of each other, this stage is very high in energy because the two atoms are so close together! remember now, electrons hate each other so they want to be far away. This also has Steric Strain, but uniquely, it also has Torsional Strain: increase in Energy caused by eclipsing (electron repulsion between bonds)

So let's summarize this:

1. Staggered formation - low in energy - steric strain

2. Eclipsed formation - high in energy - steric and torsional strain.

Well, that was kind of small...but you can see the relative energy: Let me just maximize it down here!

A. Anti-staggered, steric	B. Torsional, steric	C. Gauche, steric
D. Torsional, steric	E. Gauche, steric	F. Torsional, steric

G. And the last one has the same exact

configuration as A!


R.S.V.P. Gauche configuration is basically the staggered formation while Anti-staggered is when the two large molecules (CH3 in this case) is at the opposite ends of each other.