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I've studied that when 1,3-dibromopropane (or in general any halogen, not just bromine) is heated with Zn dust, the electrons produced cause the halogens to break away homolytically and two free radicals are formed. These free radicals then combine to form cyclopropane.

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My question is, will this also occur for 1,3-dihalides when the carbon count is increased, say in 1,3-dibromobutane?

Everything I found related to this was either talking about the 3-carbon dihaloalkane case, or seemed to be some complicated free radical cyclization which was way out of my reach.

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    $\begingroup$ Please don't use MathJax for chemical names; they're only supposed to be used for chemical formulas, and then it's better to use the mhchem package as this provides convenient and correct typography, i.e. $\ce{H2O}$ $\ce{H2O}$ not $H2O$ $H2O$. $\endgroup$ – orthocresol♦ Oct 14 '20 at 10:41
  • $\begingroup$ @orthocresol ahh, thanks. I didn't see any specific details on the Ask Question page so just ended up using MathJax which was the only thing I had used before. $\endgroup$ – Ashish Ahuja Oct 14 '20 at 10:46
  • $\begingroup$ This mechanism there is more like symbolic representation of what may really happen there, or even outright incorrect. $\endgroup$ – Mithoron Oct 14 '20 at 22:00
  • $\begingroup$ @Mithoron could you point me towards a reference with the correct mechanism? $\endgroup$ – Ashish Ahuja Oct 15 '20 at 5:58

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