.What type of reaction is a Grignard reaction? 

 What is the critical intermediate (which can be isolated and enables the final product).

 

Why was extraction by both acid AND base necessary to arrive at highly purified benzoic acid?

 

.Why should water be excluded from a Grignard reaction?  Since this is the case, why does just addition of a cotton ball work for our reaction setup?

 

.If we wanted to improve our set-up, we could have added a desiccant between two cotton plugs.  Why is this much better than adding drying agents such as Na2SO4 directly into the solution?