Spectroscopy study

NMR spectroscopy

Treat NMR as a consistency check: the number of signals, their areas, their shifts, and their splitting should all agree with the proposed structure.

Chemical shift

Nearby electronegative atoms, pi systems, and carbonyls move signals downfield.

Relative peak area estimates how many equivalent hydrogens contribute.

Neighboring nonequivalent hydrogens produce predictable multiplets in simple first-order cases.

Equivalent atoms collapse the number of unique signals.

Carbon environments identify carbonyls, aromatic carbons, and saturated carbons without integration as a first assumption.