Questionasker

Hi there

As a Chemistry student I've never understood this simple idea and that's why I'm asking anyone to help knock some sense into me. So my problem is NOT how to calculate moles, my problem is understanding the difference between the moles that you calculate in a reaction, given the mass of the reactant or product and obviously calculating the relative atomic/molecular mass, and the moles that's given in a balanced reaction.  To make things a bit clearer, the calculated moles of a reaction is very small, small than zero in some cases followed by many other numbers before the first significant figure, but the moles presented in a balanced reaction are usually integers.

If anyone needs me to be more specific by all means ask and I will gladly provide an example as to what I'm stuck with.

I don’t get how Br- can’t be a radical since I believe the hydrogen bromide undergoes homolytic fission, like Halogen molecules in free radical addition. To me they both seem the same but with slightly different steps.

Hi there

im really struggling to get my head around the difference between electrophilic addiction and free radical addition. I know the steps on these two different reactions but I just don’t get how they can differ from each other. One of the reactants, for an electrophilic addition can be simple like hydrogen bromide, the bond breaks from the double,triple bond acting as a Bronsted lowery base and the bromide is left with an unpaired electron, which I believe should be known as a free radical, so then it will form a bond with one of the carbocations and produce a halogenoalkane, for example.
 

I really just can’t distinguish the  the two of them and I’d really love some help. 
 

thank you