The center of reactivity of alkenes lies in the double bond.

Besides addition, the double bond could also

be oxidized. Some of the important reactions of alkenes are as follows :
1. Addition of hydrogen halide (HX)
Markovnikov's law applies to asymmetric alkene addition reactions. The law stated that positive
ion (H+) will attack the double bond to create a stable carbocation.

The reaction for the formation of carbocations occurs slowly and becomes the rate-determining
step of the reaction. The carbocation formed is stabilized by hyperconjugation, so the order of
stability is tertiary carbocation > secondary > primary. At the stage of carbocation formation,
rearrangement reactions can also occur to produce more stable carbocations.

2. Hydration of alkenes
Alkene hydration is the entry of water (H2O) into the alkene to form alcohol or an electrophilic
attack that occurs with the help of an acid catalyst.

The reaction mechanism of the hydration of alkenes begins with the formation of H3O+ ions. The
H3O+ ions will dissociate into H and H2O+, then the positive charge of H will activate the
double bond of C to transfer electron (electrophilic attack). The H bond then will release its bond
with H2O so that the initially positive H2O charge becomes neutral after H is released.
 After that, the C will bind to H and cause another C to become positively charged. This positively
charged C will attract H2O nucleophiles, resulting in nucleophilic attacks on positive C. As a side
note, nucleophiles are compounds that have a tendency to bond with more positive ones. The
reaction continues with the bind of C and O from H2O which causes it to be unstable. This is
because O only has 2 bonds so that when it binds to C, O uses that 2 bonds and tends to be
positively charged. Therefore, the nucleophilic attacks occurs again from the H2O molecules to
H, causing the H to escape and give a pair of electrons to O so that O will return back to neutral
and stable, which causes the formation of alcohol compounds at the end of the reaction.

3. Halogen addition
in the addition reaction of an alkene with a halogen, the two halogen atoms will enter or be
bonded to the double bonded carbon atom from the opposite direction so that this reaction is said
to follow an anti-addition pattern. This reaction occurs through a carbocation intermediate called
a bridged halogenide ion.
4. The Hydroboration Oxidation reaction
This reaction can be divided into two steps, starting with the addition of a double bond using
borohydride reagent (BH3), then proceeding with oxidation using peroxide (H2O2) to produce
alcohol and boric acid. The addition of borohydride is a sin addition reaction, because the hydride
and boron ions attack the double bond from one side and the final product is also on one side.
This reaction does not follow the Markovnikov's law so it is often called as an anti-Markovnikov
addition reaction.

5. Epoxidation of alkenes
Alkenes can react with peroxides to produce cyclic compounds called epoxides (oxiranes), and if
the reaction is continued by hydrolysis using an acid catalyst, diol compounds (glycols) are
obtained. Epoxidation of alkenes uses peroxy acids; various procedures have been developed for
epoxidation of alkenes with the addition of buffers to minimize problems.