Talk:Epoxide

Merge/rewrite?

Why not ditch this article. It's horrible and wrong in most places. I've never heard of the "-epoxy" prefix, (usually "-epoxide" suffix) which is notated in the article as a suffix anyway. Also, no carbocation is generated in basic cleavage reactions.

Support merge. I presume by "this article" the previous person means the epoxides article that is to be merged with this one? (The things you refer to are there, not here) Yes, I agree that the Epoxides article is bad- 90 degrees is wrong, the carbocation is wrong with base as you say. The epoxy prefix is correct, though, or at least I have seen it- and try a Google search for epoxypropane, it's there. The link to oxirane should stay- but describing it as linked to two methyl groups is horrendous! THIS article here (epoxide) is rather better, and should form the core of the new article IMHO. Walkerma 01:21, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, I meant to say "epoxy" suffix... Arg.

Organic chemist to the rescue. I'll keep adding to this page till the basic epoxide chemistry is covered. Don't hesitate to correct my errors.

Can I suggest a diagram at the beginning of an epoxy group? I'm not a chemist, and it took me a good minute of parsing the start of the article to work out that:

0 - C

| /

C

was the characteristic bit of an epoxy. (If I understood it correctly). 129.94.6.30 05:21, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Another revision? - prune artwork?

The article is obviously the result of an homework assignment for a synthesis class which forced a large number of spacious drawings and a historical review of the kinds of narrowly focused epoxidations studied in universities. There is virtually no mention of the important stuff - nothing on ethylene and propylene oxides, which dominate the market, no real world applications involving the precursors to epoxy resins, no biology, reactions is thin. Choices

• we could remove some of these images, which damage the readability of current article (the images were shrunk here by 1/3)
• we could split off an article on "olefin epoxidation," which could collect some of all of these nine images to form an article for that particular specialty,

--Smokefoot (talk) 13:16, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Nomenclature

This article could do with a sentence saying why the concatenation of these bits of words, epo- and -oxy- has been made, and I can't insert it because I don't know. But it does seem to me an unacceptable omission for an encyclopedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nick Barnett (talk • contribs) 18:22, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Is this correct?

== Safety == Epoxides are alkylating agents, making many of them highly toxic.

References

I have never seen epoxies used as alkylating agents. Are we sure this is correct? GRALISTAIR (talk) 21:33, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Epoxides are mainly used as alkylating agents. Kind of the reason they exist (except for EO, which is consumed for glycol)--Smokefoot (talk) 02:35, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Depends. Epichlorohydrin and Ethylene oxide are produced on a huge scale and are alkylating agents, making them carcinogenic - but most readers and even most chemists are unlikely to encounter those compounds. They are more normally encountered as epoxy resins (Araldite to you and me) and I don't think those are toxic much. As ever, trying to define the health effects of a functional group can be tricky. --Project Osprey (talk) 10:11, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

I suspect much of this is the difference between epoxide and epoxy. One is generally an alkylating agent, the other is not. Epoxide (the group) is part of the precursor for epoxy (hard resin) and its strong alkylating ability is the basis for the chemical reaction that occurs in the curing stage. Most commercial epoxy precursors have a hazard warning on the "resin" part (the epoxide chemical), which one mixes with the "hardener" (nucleophile that gets alkylated by it). DMacks (talk) 20:17, 18 February 2022 (UTC)