The only way of mastering any topic in Organic Chemistry is doing lots of practice problems. And I know, seeing my students, that starting to work on a practice problem may be the hardest part as you don’t know where to start. It is difficult to visualize what where the double bond would be moved if you follow the five curved arrows crammed in one step. Here is the trick:
We are always told to think before doing something. Fair enough. But let me tell you, it is also strangely enough, that in Organic Chemistry, it is often better to draw and then think about what you did (not in the lab though). It is much easier to have a structure in front of you and check for errors and improvements.
Do the first step, take the pencil and you will see that the ball gets rolling.
You have all these Organic Chemistry Practice Problems waiting to be solved!
The Arndt-Eistert reaction is used for extending the carbon chain of carboxylic acids by one carbon atom: The extra carbon is introduced via diazomethane (CH2N2), which is quite nucleophilic and, upon reacting with an acid chloride, forms a … Read more
We have seen that LiAlH4 is one of the most powerful reducing agents and can be used to reduce many functional groups, such as aldehydes, ketones, esters, nitriles, and even carboxylic acids. Many of these reductions can also be achieved … Read more
When learning about ortho, meta, and para substitution in electrophilic aromatic substitution, we have seen that the para position is generally preferred, especially when the activating group is bulky. For example, we can see how the ratio in favor of … Read more
Remember when discussing crossed aldol reactions, we saw that they occur between two carbonyl compounds, one of which is first converted into a nucleophile through deprotonation at the α-position. The product is typically a β-hydroxy carbonyl compound, which can further … Read more
One of the factors we learned about increasing the stability of resonance structures was the presence of heteroatoms next to carbocations due to the donation of the lone pair and forming a new resonance structure with a complete octet on … Read more
We have seen many nucleophilic addition reactions to aldehydes and ketones, including those of amines. So, when we imagine an amine reacting with an aldehyde or ketone, we immediately recall the C=N bond, which implies formation of an imine, also … Read more
When you need to identify all the isomers for a given molecular formula, the first thing you want to do is calculate the degree of unsaturation so that you know whether the compounds contain any π bonds or ring structures. … Read more
Drawing proper chair conformations of cyclohexane is one of the skills you will need throughout your Organic Chemistry 1 and 2 classes. The main component of the chair conformation is, well, the chair-like structure of the cyclic structure. There are … Read more
We have learned that alcohols are versatile reactive species because they act both as nucleophiles and electrophiles. When they are used as electrophiles, the OH group is substituted with a nucleophile, and for this to happen, we need to first … Read more
PCl₅ is one of several reagents we have seen that are used for converting alcohols to alkyl halides: Notice that in the case of chiral secondary alcohols, there is inversion of configuration, which indicates that substitution at the … Read more
