Anti-Bredt olefin
File sealed
The detectives are still writing this one up. The poster and the facts are below; the film and the interrogation room open soon.
Booking photographs
The suspect, from its real atomic coordinates. Drag to turn it. Height chart in nanometers, ruled every 0.05 nm. This sheet of paper is over 100,000 times thicker. Mugshot: a computer model; nobody has a photo.
Rap sheet
- Answers to
- 1-Norbornene (bicyclo[2.2.1]hept-1-ene).
- Height
- 0.49 nm, standing on end.
- Weight
- 0.16 zeptograms
- Record
- Broke Bredt’s rule (1924): no double bond at a bridgehead.
- Build
- A trans-alkene in a cage: twisted 35.5°, one end bent 20.1° toward a pyramid.
- Strain
- 54.2 kcal/mol, yet still a double bond (bond order 1.86).
- Habits
- Grabs the nearest partner: furans, pyrroles, indene, anthracene.
- First seen
- Never, directly. First trapped in 1971; a 2017 textbook still says “too unstable to form.”
- Last seen
- In a sealed flask in a lab in Los Angeles, just before its capture.
of them ever directly observed. It is known only by what it leaves in traps.
You’ve never seen one. Neither has anyone else.
The poster on the street
This is the photocopied wanted poster for Anti-Bredt olefin, No. 124 of the exotic forty. They were made for noticeboards around Boston, Cambridge and the rest of the east coast.
Found one? Scan its QR code with your phone. If you're a signed-in player, the sighting goes on your record with +1 XP.
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