Some of your professors will try to sneak this one in on you during an exam: Your professor will ask you to synthesize the symmetric diol shown below and you will either not know how or you will come up with a convoluted, difficult or wrong answer. JUST REMEMBER: Symmetric diols came from the Pinacol reaction. While
Organic Chemistry Help: Symmetric diols from the Pinacol reaction Read More »
Happy New Year! It has been a while since we have put a new organic chemistry post up, so I thought I would put a little guide up now that finals are over. The question is: How did you decipher an H1 NMR spectrum? Well, here is a good, uniform way to tackle
Organic Chemistry Help: Deciphering an NMR [with study guide] Read More »
Organic Chemistry Rules: Never violate these!! Disclaimer: This posting applies to Undergraduate organic chemistry. This does NOT apply to crazy physicists who create all sorts of insanity in a laboratory that cannot exist outside a xenon forcefield. In organic chemistry, like in life itself, there are rules. Some of them (known as the “always/never” rules) should never be violated,
Organic Chemistry rules: Always, sometime, never. Read More »
Alkene reactions Alkene reactions are great because a double bond in organic chemistry gives you all sorts of way to add on to the molecule and create a bunch of different products. The chemistry works because there is a ton of electron density within the pi bonds of the double bond. Since sigma bonds are
Alkene reactions [with useful chart] Read More »
Emil Fischer is considered by many to be the greatest organic chemist to ever live. His problem was that he created a way of looking at organic molecules that is very confusing to undergraduates. These structures are necessary to learn and are very helpful when looking at certain molecules (such as carbohydrates), but they are
Fischer Projections are a Black Tie Affair Read More »
How to study for organic chemistry? How to study for organic chemistry? I get asked this question pretty frequently…and while there is no easy answer (because every student is different), here is the four-pronged solution that we have come up with here. This answer is based on a survey of organic chemistry professors that
How to study for organic chemistry? Read More »
http://www.aceorganicchem.com/careers-in-chemistry-10-reasons-to-become-a-chemist.html Careers in chemistry are a great idea. People ask me a lot of questions about being a chemist: Why should I become a chemist? Does a career in chemistry make sense for me or is it for huge nerds? What is a career in chemistry like? Will I be stuck in a lab for
Careers in chemistry: What a great idea Read More »
What is a constitutional isomer? HINT: It is the same thing as a structural isomer and configurational isomer. Are you wondering if you have a constitutional isomer? There are two questions you need to ask yourself before we can answer this question. The first question: do the compounds have the same molecular formula? If they
What is a constitutional isomer? [with a nice chart] Read More »
Q: What is a meso compound? Q: Why should we care about them in our organic chemistry class? We care because this is an easy place for a professor to try to trip you up. What is a meso compound? Meso compounds are molecules that have multiple stereocenters but are superimposable on their mirror images. Meso compounds
What is a Meso Compound: Surprisingly Not Chiral [with examples] Read More »
