Organic Chemistry rules: Always, sometime, never.

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, such as always wash your hands leaving the bathroom, or never spit in church.  Other rules (known as the “sometimes” rules) are guides that you should be aware of rather than hard rules. 

Thus, we present a blog post called “Organic Chemistry Rules: ALWAYS, Sometimes, NEVER.”

ALWAYS/NEVER:

1) Hydrogen ALWAYS has only one bond to it.  You will never see an organic molecule that has two bonds to hydrogen.

2) Carbon NEVER has more than four bonds. EVER!

organic chemistry rules

3) Alkaline metals (Li, Na, ect) and alkali earth metals (Be, Mg, Ca, ect) can NEVER be negatively charged.  They will always be neutral or positively-charged ions in solution.

4)  Noble gases are NEVER a part of any organic molecule.  Because they have a full octet, they have very little reason to create a covalent bond.

5) Electrons ALWAYS flow from negative to positive.  This is a biggie.  And because of this, rule #6 exists.

6) Reaction arrows ALWAYS point from negative to positive.  Always point from the nucleophile to the electrophile.

Sometimes:

– Carbon can have 4 bonds (neutral), 3 bonds (positive, negative), or even 2 bonds (carbene)

– Halogens USUALLY have one bond, but can occasionally have two.

– Nitrogen usually has 3 bonds (neutral), 4 bonds (positive) or 2 bonds (negative)

– Oxygen usually has 2 bonds, but can have only 1 bond (negative) or 3 bonds (positive)

– Phosphorous is USUALLY an oxophile, meaning if it can react with oxygen, it will.

This brings us to another point about knowing the common states of organic atoms.  This can really help you in solving organic chemistry if you know the normal state of organic atoms [this is a link to one of our favorite blog posts]

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