Learning organic chemistry is like trying to work in a foreign country; if you don’t know the language, it is going to be very difficult to learn how to do your job. Imagine that you have just been transported to the mythical country of “ochemia”, a small island nation in the south Pacific, where your job is to write chemistry reactions.
Frequently, in a chemistry lecture, professors start tossing out strange organic chemistry terms far too quickly. Because students aren’t fluent in “ochemia” yet, they need to translate each word in their head to understand what the instructor has just said. By the time this mentally translation is done, the student has just missed the next sentence and has lost half of the lecture. Our goal is to get as fluent as we can in the language of chemistry as quickly as we can. Here are some terms it will be helpful to memorize so that you don’t have to do a mental translation when you hear them:
Meth = 1
Eth= 2
Prop = 3
But = 4
Pent = 5
Hex = 6
Hept = 7
Oct = 8
Non = 9
Dec = 10
Nucleophile = has electrons, has a negative or partial negative charge
Halogen = F, Cl, Br, I
Aprotic solvents = do not contain OH or NH bonds
Protic solvents = contain OH or NH bonds
Lewis Acid = electron acceptor
Lewis Base = electron donor
Carbonyl group = (C=O)
Cis = same side of a double bond or ring
Trans = opposite sides of a double bond or ring
Electrophile = wants electrons, has a positive or partial positive charge
As always, for more help please go to organic chemistry
Dr. Michael Pa
Dr. Michael Pa got a bachelors degree in chemistry from Binghamton University, a masters degree in organic chemistry from the University of Arizona and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Arizona. His research focus was on novel pain killers which were more potent than morphine but designed to have fewer side effects. There may even be a patent or two that came out of it. Prior to all of this, he was a chemist at Procter and Gamble. After all of that, he (briefly) worked as a post-doctoral assistant at Syracuse University, working on novel organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). In between, he did NOT compete at the 1996 Olympics, make the Atlanta Braves opening day roster, or become the head coach of the Indiana Pacers, as he had intended. #fail During this entire time, he always loved helping students, especially if they were struggling with organic chemistry. In 2006, Dr. Pa founded AceOrganicChem.com in order to make learning organic chemistry fast and easy. 14 years and about 60,000 students later we are still helping students to learn organic chemistry one reaction at a time at https://www.aceorganicchem.com
