We have found a beautiful example of anisochrony of diastereotopic acyclic methylene hydrogens in a symmetric diketone, synthesized by techniques traditionally performed in an introductory organic laboratory course. Synthesis of the diketone is high-yielding and easy to carry out, and the products can be directly isolated with a good degree of purity with no need of further manipulation. The reaction can be accomplished in a single laboratory session.

Acetylenic vinyllithiums (2), which were generated from the corresponding acetylenic vinyl bromides (3) by low-temperature lithium-bromine exchange, cyclize on warming to give, following quench with water, isomerically pure conjugated bis-exocyclic 1,3-dienes (1) in good to excellent yield. Both five-membered and six-membered outer-ring dienes may be prepared: 5-exo closure of an acetylenic vinyllithium, which proceeds with total stereocontrol via syn-addition to give the E-isomer of a five-membered outer-ring diene, tolerates aryl-, silyl-, or alkyl-substituents at the distal acetylenic carbon; the corresponding 6-exo process is less facile and seems to be confined to substrates bearing an anion-stabilizing substituent, such as phenyl or trimethylsilyl, at the terminal acetylenic carbon. The highly reactive bis-exocyclic 1,3-dienes serve as precursors to polycyclic materials through subsequent Diels-Alder reaction with a wide variety of dienophiles. The consecutive exchange-cyclization-cycloaddition methodology, which can be conducted in one pot without isolation of intermediates, provides an efficient, operationally simple, and diastereoselective route to diverse polycyclic ring systems.

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[reaction: see text] Resonance-assisted intramolecular hydrogen bonding in both polar aprotic and nonpolar solutions of 4-(dimethylamino)-2'-hydroxychalcone (DMAHC) has been investigated by variable-temperature proton NMR spectroscopy. In both nonpolar and polar solvents, the signal for the phenolic hydrogen moves downfield as the temperature is lowered. In each solvent system studied, a linear relationship between chemical shift and temperature was observed.