Unsolved problems in chemistry
Unsolved problems in chemistry tend to be (”can we make X compound”) and are solved rather quickly, but here are some persistent questions with deep implications:
- Solvolysis of the norbornyl cation: Why is the norbornyl cation so stable? Is it symmetrical? This problem has been largely settled for the unsubstituted norbornyl cation, but not for the substituted cation.
- On-water reactions: Why are some organic reactions accelerated at the water-organic interface?
- Better-than perfect enzymes: Why do some enzymes exhibit faster-than-diffusion kinetics?
- Feynmanium: What are the chemical consequences of having an element (137) whose electrons must travel faster than the speed of light?
- Chemical transformation traversal: Is it practical to generate a database of chemical transformations and derive synthetic routes to any arbitrary compound?
- Protein folding problem: Is it possible to predict the secondary, tertiary and quaternary structure of a polypeptide sequence based solely on the sequence, and environmental information?
- Inverse protein-folding problem: Is it possible to design a polypeptide sequence which will adopt a given structure under certain environmental conditions?
- What is the origin of homochirality in amino acids and sugars?
- Do sterics (electronic repulsion) or electronics (electronic polarization) have a greater effect on chiral induction in stereospecific and stereoselective chemical reactions?