Dec
24
I’m taking organic chemistry this semester as a requirement for my BS in biology. I obviously passed general chemistry, but I’m still worried about this class. I’ve heard horrible stories about kids failing with 30-averages and having to withdraw. I also heard that it’s particularly difficult at my college. The whole chemistry dept. pretty much sucks. What can I do and how should I study for this class? What are some of the easier and more difficult things we’ll cover and what should I do for outside work/studying?
Thank you! Any advice is greatly appreciated!
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4 Responses to “How can I get a good grade in Organic Chemistry?”
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I am a chemist and love it very much! The only way to study chemistry, organic or not, is to practice alot of problems. Somethings have to just be remembered. When biology and other students don’t understand that they think chemists sucks.
Talk to your professor whenever you come across a problem, this makes you seem eager to do well and it could prove to be rewarding later on, secondly go to class every time. It will help you to see the material and be able to ask questions when you don’t understand. Prepare before class, read what you are covering in advance so you have some general background knowledge and you can ask better questions. Do the homework, it really does help to practice the material before the exam. Study before the exams, don’t cram, just work an hour in each day in the week or two leading up to the exam. find a group of people to study with, meet once or twice a week, chances are with several people there will be at least one person who understands a concept, even if no one else gets it. This will help, and if you do find yourself falling behind get help earlier rather than later, if you wait you might find that there is no way to fix your problem and that could put you into a position of having to withdraw with a failing average.
Yes, organic chemistry can be very difficult for those who are not prepared for it ! And, without a good teacher, it can be very hard to learn it from class.
Luckily, there are a large number of books which have been written specifically to address this issue, which you should be able to find in the library. For example, my public library had a Schaum’s outline for organic chemistry, the Barron’s “Organic Chemistry the Easy Way”, whereas my school library (merely that of a high school, not a huge university library) had a book that I think was called the REA Organic Chemistry solver (this book is more advanced and less organized, but I liked it.)
Keep the following in mind.
* A good understand of inorganic chemistry is absolutely essential.
* A good understanding of the physics concepts underlying chemistry, is also essential. (Chemistry is governed exclusively by the electromagnetic force.)
* Know all of your reactions! You will be hopelessly lost without them. For example, if you didn’t know the aromatic nitration reaction to place a nitro group on an aromatic ring, you’d have to take a circuitous route with at least 4 steps.
* Do all the practice problems in your textbook. Organic chemistry is about problem solving, not plug-and-chug exercises - and you need to get the feel of it.
The easier things you learn are probably physical properties of organic compounds, naming, and simple reactions converting between functional groups. The hardest thing is how to plan a synthesis of a complex molecule using condensation reactions…
I have been answering this questions quite often.
I am working on updating my website (http://www.curvedarrowpress.com) and this will be future content:
Organic chemistry can be broken into two main challenges. Although it is still challenging, most students will be able to master drawing chemical structures, nomenclature, and stereochemistry. The hardest task is learning chemical reactions. Reactions are a progression of electron movements resulting in a product. These steps comprise reaction mechanisms.
We have sought to make learning reaction mechanisms simpler. By using “pre-bonds”, a student can intuitively know which bonds are being made in a reaction scheme. To further simplify learning reaction mechanisms, we have broken that process down into three levels, Parts A, B, and C.
Each problem is presented at four levels
Part A, curved arrows missing
Part B, pre-bonds and some structures missing
Part C, all intermediate structures and products missing
Part D, a complete answer to check your results.
From the back of the book,
This is a reaction mechanism workbook designed to accompany a standard organic chemistry textbook. The book presents reaction mechanisms at three levels of difficulty: basic, moderate, 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. This is a reaction mechanism workbook designed to accompany a standard organic chemistry textbook. The book presents reaction mechanisms at three levels of difficulty: basic, moderate, and advanced. In Part A, the easiest, the missing 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 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.
This book was fundamental to increasing class averages on the American Chemical Society’s Standard Examination in Organic Chemistry by up to twenty percentile points. It has been designed with the principle that our brains are pattern matching machines. Therefore, the emphasis has been placed upon teaching the patterns of reactions. It is those patterns that are used to solve new problems.
We expect the book to also become available on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble shortly.