What happens on heating an ester? While solving a few questions a came across a problem which asked me what would happen when sec-butyl ethanoate was heated.
I had never read about this reaction before and took to researching through a few of my textbooks, but could not find an explanation as to what would happen.
I also thought along the lines free radical formations and tried to make an attempt.
However according to the answer the reaction was a syn elimination and it would give a Hoffmann product. But I couldn't get any more information out of it.
But now I was stumped. So please help me out of you know anything about this.

Edit:
After googling for sometime I came across a paper which said that this particular compound would decompose to give cis butene.
However I could not understand the reason for this. Here is where I saw it:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/i360047a014
This is an example of a Thermal syn elimination. The Wikipedia article is a good place to start: here

image from here
From ref 2

Unsymmetrical Acetate and xanthate esters yield a mixture of all the possible alkenes, but there is usually a predominance of the more highly substituted alkene.