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!
Introduction to the Hybridization Let’s start by answering this question: Why do we need the hybridization theory? Here is one answer to this. It is confirmed experimentally that the carbon atom in methane (CH4) and other alkanes has a tetrahedral … Read more
Here is a simple view on this important topic. In Lewis structures, we show each covalent bond as two dots, which represent a pair of electrons. For example: So the bonds can be represented either with a line … Read more
Decalin is the common name for fused bicyclic compounds that consist of two six-membered rings. As you may remember from the discussion about bicyclic compounds, fusing two six-membered rings does not give a 12-atom system because there are two common … Read more
Acid-Base definitions In this post, we will go over the key aspects, reactions of Lewis Acids and Bases, and their relation to other chemical reactions. Before doing that, let’s do a quick recap of acid-base definitions in general. The first … Read more
The acid-base reactions are very important in organic chemistry as they lay the foundation of many principles used in other chapters, such as resonance stabilization, substitution, elimination reactions, and many more. One of the key skills in acid-base chemistry is … Read more
In the previous post, we talked about the acid strength and its quantitative description by pKa. The pKa table shows how greatly the acidity varies for different functional groups. For example, The question is, how do we explain … Read more
In the previous post, we learned about the pKa and summarized the factors that affect the acidity and pKa value. The pKa values are mostly used in order the predict the position of the equilibrium of an acid-base reaction, as well … Read more
Let’s first define the meaning of a strong acid. According to the Arrhenius theory, acids dissociate in water to form protons (H+). The general equation for acid dissociation can be shown as: For a specific example, we can … Read more
The first definition of Acids and Bases was given by Arrhenius, and according to his theory, acids dissociate in water to form protons (H+) and bases dissociate in water to form (–OH): The limitation of this theory became … Read more
