Cyclooctyne

Cyclooctyne suffers somewhat from ring strain! While the C-atoms in triple bonds formally are sp-hybridized and linear, it is clear that the size of the ring does not allow for such linearity. Go around the ring and check the conformations around the C-C single bonds. How many of those are staggered? How many are eclipsed? As far as the ring strain is concerned: How far do you think can we go?


Figure. The RHF/6-31G* optimized structure of cyclooctyne.