The situation in which reaction parameters that characterize different bond forming or bond breaking processes in the same reaction have developed to different extents as the transition state is approached along some arbitrarily defined reaction coordinate. For example, in the nitroalkane anomaly, the Brønsted
exponent for proton removal is smaller than the Brønsted
for the nitroalkane, because of imbalance between the amount of bond breaking and resonance delocalization in the transition state. Imbalance is common in reactions such as elimination, addition and other complex reactions that involve proton (hydron) transfer. BERNASCONI (1992). See also synchronous, synchronization (principle of imperfect synchronization).
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