Chapter 5: Pushing Curly Arrows

Overview:

• Curly arrows are drawn to help us visualise how electrons move during organic chemistry processes.
• Recall that a covalent bond is a pair of electrons so if we can understand how the electrons are moving, we know how the bonds are moving
• This means we can understand how reactions occur.
• A curly arrow scheme shows how the electrons move in the same way as the image below shows how dancers move their feet in a dance.
• The curly arrows show the movement of the electrons in the "dance" of a chemical reaction.

© Dr. Ian Hunt, Department of Chemistry