Adamantane is the saturated cage hydrocarbon . Its carbon framework is a compact three-dimensional network of fused chair-like six-membered rings, with the connectivity recorded by its tricyclic structural name.[ref]
The rigid cage restricts conformational motion. Symmetry can make several carbon or hydrogen positions equivalent in a spectrum, while substitution breaks those equivalences. The molecule therefore provides a useful example of how three-dimensional connectivity and molecular symmetry influence chemical reactivity and spectroscopic counting.
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