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!
Oxidation of Aldehydes with Tollens’ Reagent Tollens’ reagent is a mild oxidizing agent used for converting aldehydes to carboxylic acids. It is prepared from silver(I) oxide in aqueous ammonia and is commonly written as Ag₂O, NH₃, ⁻OH or Ag2O, NH4OH: … Read more
The main component of the stereochemistry of the Diels-Alder reaction that you are going to see in your class is the formation of endo and exo products when cyclic dienes react with dienophiles. The most common products in the reactions … Read more
You may have noticed that we use lots of reduction reactions, such as those of carbonyls, such as aldehydes, ketones, esters, nitro groups, nitriles, etc., and we do not bother about the benzene ring that appears in the same molecule: … Read more
We have seen that the product of the Diels-Alder reaction is most often a cyclohexene derivative. The ring is formed by the newly formed sigma bonds between the diene and the dienophile, which means 4 conjugated atoms combine with 2 … Read more
We know from the earlier chapters of organic chemistry that alkenes are unsaturated hydrocarbons and therefore are capable of undergoing various electrophilic addition reactions, which transform the sp2 carbons of the double bond into the sp3 hybridization state. Another important … Read more
We have seen in the reduction of alkynes that sodium metal dissolved in ammonia is a source of electrons, and these electrons can be used to reduce the triple bond to a trans alkene: The same principles apply … Read more
Starting from General Chemistry and up until discussing the key principles of acids and bases, we recognize hydrogens connected to heteroatoms as being the acidic protons. Recall all the inorganic acids such as HCl, HBr, H₂SO₄, etc., and the carboxylic … Read more
We have learned earlier that the pKa values can be used to predict whether the equilibrium of a given acid-base reaction lies to the right or to the left. In other words, we can compare the pKa values of the … Read more
You have already learned the base names of alkanes and the IUPAC rules for determining the parent chain, substituents, alphabetical priority, and giving complete names to alkanes and alkyl halides. Here is a typical example of naming a substituted alkane, … Read more
We have discussed earlier that esters can be hydrolyzed under acidic or basic conditions to give carboxylic acids and alcohols. Lactones behave in an analogous way, except that being cyclic esters, their hydrolysis leads to ring opening and … Read more
