The supernatant drawn off by a syringe or cannula is adequate for synthetic applications and can be stored at ambient temperature (under argon) without evidence of decomposition over >3 months. To isolate KBTA as a solid, the swivel frit was inverted to remove residual potassium, and the filtrate was then concentrated while stirring at ambient temperature in vacuo until a cloudy precipitate was observed by shining a flashlight through the solution. Rapidly cooling the supernatant to -78 ºC precipitated a white crystalline solid. The supernatant was siphoned away via syringe, and the precipitate was rinsed twice with 20 mL distilled cyclopentane at -78 ºC by syringe. The white crystalline solid was dried in vacuo for two hours at ambient temperature, transferred to a glove box, and isolated as a white solid (11.1 g, 76% yield). The white solid develops a bright pink hue upon exposure to oxygen, so excessive drying is not recommended. Potassium Isopropyltrimethylsilazide was prepared from isopropyl trimethylsilazane (5 mL, 29 mmol, 1.0 equiv), potassium metal (1.4 g, 36 mmol, 1.25 equiv), isoprene (1.8 mL, 18 mmol, 0.64 equiv), and Et3N (8.2 mL) as described for KBTA above. The resulting tan powdery solid (3.2 g, 80 % yield) was spectroscopically clean and used without further purification. (KPTA prepared with only 0.50 equiv of isoprene in DMEA produced a clean white solid, and we are confident this result could be replicated in Et3N. Density Functional Theory Computations. All density functional theory (DFT) calculations were performed using Gaussian 16. Geometries were optimized at the M06-2X 17 level of theory using Grimme's zero-dampened D3 dispersion correction 18 (M06-2X-D3(0)) with the double-ζ polarization-consistent segment-contracted basis set pcseg-1 from Jensen and co-workers. For improved accuracy single-point energies were calculated with the same dispersion corrected M06-2X-D3(0) functional 17 using the larger (triple-ζ) basis sets of the same family; pcseg-2. A pruned (99, 590) integration grid (equivalent to Gaussian's "UltraFine" option) was used for all calculations. Solvation effects were accounted for by the Self Consistent Reaction Field method using the SMD model of Truhlar and coworkers (Solvent = THF). Jensen's segment-contracted polarization-consistent basis sets were obtained from the Basis Set Exchange and included in Gaussian using the "gen" keyword. CYLview 21 was used to render all ball-and-stick models.