contradictory answers

probabably......(a) .....as it is a strong base,,,,,,,,,,and a side product wud be (b),,,,,vaise weres pritish ?? :)

mujhe b lagta hai

It's a strong base as well as strong nucleophile...so there are good chances of substitution through S_N² mechanism also...so answer can be B...

Defining factor : Temperature.
Both are possible.

I logged in specially to agree with AISSCE
yes BT Sucks

OOOHHH.......SORRY NEVER KNEW THAT[1]BUT BY THE WAY WAT IS ORIGINAL????

hey , pritish, nothing like dat. we hv the same posters, thats yet. we two are two different guys.
and @ AISSCE , sorry fr the controversial statement, i hv deleted it.

@ eure, i just wanted to know the logic behind the answers given. anyways, here goes my logic.

There are two ways possible :

i) acidic hydrogen from phenol goes to the ethoxide ion and ethanol is formed leaving phenoxide ion as the nucleophile.
as phenoxide ion is though strong , but hindered base hs the possibility of elimination.

ii) ethoxide ion directly attacks the halide. in this case the nucleophile is ethoxide ion , which is strong and non-hindered. thus, the possibility of elimination is negligible.

tus the mechanism goes through 2nd method and diethyl ether is formed.

Since the medium is ethanol so there will be some ethoxide ion left even after extracting the proton from phenol..so in that case there will be competition b/w ethoxide and phenoxide ion..since ethoxide is a better nucleophile so option B will be correct....that's what i think...

@Aieee...just a li'l correction...diethyl ether will be formed as product and not ethyl ester

thanks all.....

and thanks aieeee for that explaiantion