NMR uses the magnetic nature of atom nuclei to its advantage. By surrounding a compound in a magnetic field, the nuclei become vulnerable to excitation by radiation in the radiofrequency range. The radiofrequency that the nuclei absorb is dependent upon the environment the nuclei are exposed to as far as the neighboring nuclei and those the nuclei are bonded to.10 In this case, a proton NMR showed adamantane as only a sharp doublet with a spacing of 0.95 ppm.(Fig 1) The symmetry of adamantane is perfectly supported by these NMR results because only a doublet means that all of the protons are identical in nature. This shows that each proton in the structure of adamantane is sharing each of the electrons equally creating a strong dependence of resonance by all protons.6 The singularity in the NMR result becomes an important diagnostic tool for determination of the purity of an adamantane perspective. Any substitution anywhere on the ring would unbalance resonance of the compound that would be picked up by the NMR in the form of another series of peaks indicating an adamantane derivative as long as the doublet remains present. IR results are much the same as those of NMR in that adamantane itself gives a clear result while any impurity clouds those results. Specifically, adamantane gives a major doublet in the region of 2926 cm-1 with a 0.8983 transmittance, and other peaks shown on Figure 2. This means that around the adamantane compound exists methyl groups that are similar in nature and surrounding environment. Consequently, all bonds absorb the same wavelengths that suggests identical motion of each of the bonds whether that be stretching, scissoring, or other. Any variance in a functional group would result in the absorbance wavelength to change. Therefore, an increase in the number of peaks and a decrease in intensity of the existing peaks would occur because the change in bonding pattern would ...
