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!
In oxidative cleavage reactions, C=C bonds are broken and replaced with C=O bonds. In this article, we will specifically focus on the oxidative cleavage of alkenes. This is most commonly achieved with potassium permanganate (KMnO4) and ozonolysis: So, … Read more
Sodium periodate (NaIO4) is a strong oxidizing agent mainly used for the oxidative cleavage of 1,2-diols (vicinal diols), forming aldehydes and ketones depending on the structure of the alcohol. So, there are two things happening here: 1) the … Read more
In this post, we will talk about the synthesis of amides using DCC and EDC coupling agents. Before getting into the details, let’s first discuss a couple of strategies for preparing amides without using any fancy coupling agent. First, considering … Read more
In the following practice problems, the reactions and different ways of preparing amines will be discussed. Keep in mind that aside from the reactions specifically related to amines, such as the Gabriel amine synthesis, there are transformations that will require … Read more
Reaction with Primary Aliphatic and Aromatic Amines Primary aliphatic and aromatic amines react with nitrous acid, forming arena diazonium salts, while the reaction of secondary amines gives N-nitrosamines (R2NN=O). Now, let’s take a closer look and see how … Read more
Amines can participate in E2 reactions to form alkenes. However, just like the OH group of alcohols, the NH2, or any other amino group, is a quite strong base and needs to be first converted into a good leaving group. … Read more
A variety of reactions that we have seen earlier can be used for preparing amines. The most straightforward would look like an SN2 reaction of an alkyl halide with ammonia or an amine: The main drawback of this … Read more
In the previous post, we talked about the preparation of amines and one of the possible approaches was the direct SN2 reaction between an alkyl halide and a primary amine. The disadvantage of this method is the polyalkylation which occurs … Read more
We know that base-catalyzed halogenation of aldehydes and ketones replaces all the ɑ hydrogens: The reaction is difficult to stop at monohalogenation because the product, after the first step, is more reactive than the starting carbonyl, and therefore keeps … Read more
We talked about the Michael reaction in which the nucleophile is a doubly stabilized enolate performing a conjugate (1, 4) addition: Remember, at the same time, that regular enolates are not efficient Michael donors since they are stronger … Read more
