Oct
27
Right now I have Bruice - Organic Chemistry 5th Edition.
I’m mowtly just looking for regular books to help me learn. I am struggling just learning from just the textbook. The teacher is sometimes hard to understand so I am relying on just one book a bit too much for my liking.
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3 Responses to “What are good books to learn Organic Chemistry?”
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That’s a good, standard textbook. Are you needing something to help you learn?
I love anything “Standard Deviants” has done:
Something like their materials would help you understand what your text is saying.
Good luck!
well I used just a random text book that my college required. I think it is way more dependent on the teacher. Organic chemistry is not that bad, some people try to memorize everything and it just does not work. If you take the extra time and learn it you will figure out how much sense everything makes. Textbooks don’t do much. concentrate on the reason reactions take place and learn the finer points of why funtional groups are functioal groups and you will be fine.
I liked Bruice. In the class I taught, I used Bruice, switched to a functional group based book and returned to Bruice. My classes median score on the ACS organic chemistry exam was 5 pts higher with Bruice.
However, I presume it is early in the semester and you are just struggling with nomenclature, hybridization, stereochemistry, etc. I knew that even though some students struggle with those topics, they can learn them. Reactions are the 900 lb gorilla of organic chemistry.
For reactions, we used a mechanism based workbook and it was roughly written around Bruice. When you get to organic reactions and want more help with reaction mechanisms, I suggest you consider the book, “A Guide to Organic Chemistry Mechanisms”.
From the back cover,
“This is a reaction mechanism workbook designed to accompany a standard organic chemistry textbook. The book presents reaction mechanisms at three levels of difficulty: simple, intermediate, and advanced. In Part A, the easiest, the curved arrows are missing. In Part B, the same problem is repeated with every other intermediate or product missing. In Part C, the problems are written in textbook fashion, and the same number of reaction arrows have been retained. Thus, you are guided from learning the logic of a reaction to writing a complete mechanism. Once you have mastered a mechanism, you should be able to solve similar problems in your textbook. Part D gives completed mechanisms.
The book has been designed with the principle that our brains are pattern matching machines. Therefore, an emphasis has been placed upon teaching the patterns of reactions. It is those patterns that are used to solve new problems. The book helped us increase our class average on the American Chemical Society’s Standard Examination in Organic Chemistry by up to twenty percentile points.”
Learn reaction mechanisms with “A Guide to Organic Chemistry Mechanisms©” at . It should also become available on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble in the next few weeks.