SN2 Reaction: Backside Attack & Walden Inversion

This simulator plays out one of the most fundamental mechanisms in organic synthesis, the bimolecular nucleophilic substitution (S_N2). A nucleophile approaches a carbon center from directly behind the leaving group, passes through a trigonal-bipyramidal transition state, and forces the three remaining substituents to flip through to the opposite face as the leaving group departs — an event chemists call Walden inversion. Choose the substrate's steric bulk (methyl through tertiary), the leaving group's ability to depart (F⁻ through I⁻), the nucleophile's strength, and the temperature, then run the reaction to watch how each factor changes the activation energy on a live energy-coordinate diagram and the rate constant computed from the Arrhenius equation.