Comment by dynm
5 years ago
> Also, a nitpick: the author refers to the condensation product of benzaldehyde and nitroethane, which is phenyl-2-nitropropene, abbreviated P2NP, incorrectly. He calls it "nitrostyrene (NTS)", which is the one-carbon-shorter homolog.
Can you give a bit more detail about what's wrong here, and how it might be fixed? Are all mentions to nitrostyrene/NTS incorrect? This is used repeatedly in the cited papers, so I'm confused if they are also wrong, or the post has mangled usage, or what.
"Nitrostyrene" is sometimes used to refer to the whole class of chemicals featuring the phenyl-ethylene-nitro linkage. So it's not wrong to call it "the nitrostyrene method". But the specific nitrostyrene that is a precursor to methamphetamine is 1-phenyl-2-nitro-propene, while the parent compound "nitrostyrene" is 1-phenyl-2-nitro-ethene.