How to pronounce“nucleophilic”in English

Nucleophilic substitution reactions are some of the most common reactions in organic chemistry so we’ll see them again and again.

Nucleophilicity refers to how readily a nucleophile attacks any non-hydrogen atom.

Nucleophilicity is a term to describe just how pushy the nucleophile’s behavior is.

A nucleophilic attack from the front side gives us the same configuration we started with.

These nucleophilic attacks are slightly more complicated fight sequences to choreograph.

That nucleophilically attacks our other starting material, the aldehyde, making an alkoxide.

So nucleophilicity increases moving down a group on the periodic table.