Rules of the Day
1-18-2017
Tour the class website by clicking here!
Help with schedules of office hours/exams and an explanation of grading.
1. THE POINT of this class and of organic chemistry is synthesis - making new molecules such as pharmaceuticals. We learn and understand mechanisms to allow the prediction of reactions as well as their regiochemistry and stereochemistry.
2. A second point of the class is to learn organic chemistry concepts that will be important for your later education in biochemisty and the biological sciences.
3. Each reaction is a chemical "tool", to be used to construct molecules. Learning mechanisms provides a means for you to understand the reactions.
Understand and learn. Do not only memorize!
4. You should come to class everyday. A previous class was analyzed and going to class was worth one letter grade.
6. "Organic is really hard if you try to memorize it instead of trying to learn and understand it"............The Organic Vampire Monkey
7. "The only real valuable thing is intuition"...........Albert Einstein
8. The most important question in chemistry is: "Where are the electrons?" The answer is that electrons are generally in higher amounts around the more electronegative atoms (e.g. F, Cl, O, N) of a molecule. Knowing where electrons are allows you to understand chemistry as opposed to simply memorizing flashcards. See today's "pictures of the day" (POTD) for a more in-depth explanation of how you should think about molecules so that you truly understand them.
9. The seven golden rules of organic chemistry explain most of what we will learn about organic chemistry
10. "Understanding Where Electrons Are and knowing how to apply the Golden Rules of Chemistry will make Organic Chemistry class as simple as possible, and will give you Organic Chemistry intuition"............Fortune Cookie Saying
11. "Organic Chemistry is like surfing a big wave. Work hard early and you are set for the semester. Falling behind is like falling off the board. It is really hard to get back on the wave once you have fallen!" …….. A Guy with a Trumpet and a Computer
12. "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler"...........Albert Einstein
13. The best way to learn how to use the different reactions for synthesis is with a "roadmap".
14. "Education is what's left after what you've learned has been forgotten" ……James Conant among others
15. Physics: Moving charge generates a magnetic field, and a moving magnetic field causes charges to move.
16. Atomic nuclei, like electrons, have a quantum mechanical property of "spin". Spin can be thought of as a small magnetic field around the nucleus created as if the positive charge of the nucleas were circulating.
17. NMR, nuclear magnetic resonance, is used to assign structures of organic molecules.
18.We care about the nuclei 1H and 13C since these are commonly found in organic molecules and they have spin quantum numbers of 1/2.
19. Nuclei with spin quantum number 1/2 are quantized in one of two orientations, "+1/2" (lower energy) or "-1/2"(higher energy) in the presence of an external magnetic field, that is, with and against the external field, respectively.
Homework:
1) Take my old CH320M/CH328M final (from 12-15-12). This will give you a calibration regarding your preparation for this class. Click here for a copy of the old CH320M/CH328M final. My class average on this exam was right around 77% on this final. (GREAT JOB shout out to my Fall of 2012 class by the way!!!) Click here for all of my old exams dating back to 2006.
2) Then, start making a Roadmap for 320M/328M reactions. You should use our table summarizing the reactions of first semester OChem as a guide. Click here to see the reaction summary table. You need to know these reactions to solve the synthesis questions you will see this semester. Focus on all the reactions that create or start with alkenes, alcohols, and haloalkanes.
Read the first two sections of the "NMR theory web handout" called "The theory and physics behind NMR" and "How to interpret an NMR spectrum". Also review the material in Sections 13.1-13.3 in the book.
Problems: Begin working on the first homework. Click here to download the pdf of the homework. You will turn this in on Friday, January 27. It is mostly a review of reactions from last semester as a way to refresh your memory. If you get 100% correct on this homework, then 1.0 T-score or percentage point will be added to your grade. Less than 100% will be scaled accordingly. For example, if you get 89% on the first exam and you got 100% on this homework it will boost your exam grade to 90%. Since there are going to be 3 homeworks leading up to each exam, you can get up to 3 T-score or percentage points added to each. The real advantage is that these homeworks look a lot like exam questions, so doing and UNDERSTANDING these homeworks is the KEY TO SUCCEEDING IN CH320N!
