Home > Organic Chemistry > Drawing Cyclohexanes in Boat and Chair Conformations

Which conformation is the most stable for cyclohexane, is it the boat conformation or the chair conformation?

Answer 1

The chair conformation is clearly the most stable conformation.

Given the chair form, each face of the ring has three axial substituents that interact sterically, as opposed to superposition of two hydrogens at each end of the boat. This clearly reduces the number of transannular interactions.

There is even more of a conformational preference for equatorial substitution when the ring is substituted with a butyl or even methyl group.

Create a model and think through the transannular interactions to explain this.

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Answer 2

Ella Allen

The chair conformation is more stable than the boat conformation for cyclohexane.

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Answer from HIX Tutor

When evaluating a one-sided limit, you need to be careful when a quantity is approaching zero since its sign is different depending on which way it is approaching zero from. Let us look at some examples.