You must log in or register to comment.
Tbf sometimes it’s hard even for organic chemists because the authors will just put an abbreviation of a non-standard variation of the name of some named reaction over the reaction arrow and then proceed to draw the product in a completely different conformation from the starting material, leaving you trying to work out which carbon is which in the world’s most annoying game of spot-the-difference (or in many cases spot-the-similarity).
y’all need jesus
Also that top line reads like a Michael Jackson quote
Hhh Hiii!
Le-Buh-Bee, Suh-Noooah!
Efff-Nee!there’s zero reason to make chart like this, it’s both barely comprehensible and touching surface level stuff only (where are palladium couplings for one)
I agree - it’s so busy that trying to learn from that just will lead to more confusion. The only thing this is good for is for showing the variety of organic chemistry, and it doesn’t even do a good job at it.
omg i’m getting flashbacks from my org chem course. The exam regulary failed about 2/3 of students, i needed 3 attempts to pass, and i studied like stupid for it (the second attempt was sooo close to a passing grade, i was really annoyed at that).
Thermal Physics was it for me. I aced every other module, but that one I had to take twice. I still have no idea what thermal physics is, and at this point I don’t want to know.
at least thermodynamics follow pretty static rules, that module was only an issue for me because it was a seminar where we had to work in groups, which i suck at.
I realized that organic chenistry you have to study until you get a feeling for how charge is distributed along a molecule to identify where and how it can react with other molecules, and what intermediarys (real or imagined) are formed, which boils down to learning as many reactions as possible. it’s a bit like learning a language with fucked up grammar.
i’d say it’s more important to learn mechanisms because this way you can notice these patterns of reactivity easier. at some point you’d only get new reactions that are really just pieces of other reactions you know put in a new way
You’re right, that’s absolutely necessary to learn, to take the language metapher further it’s like learning to declinate verbs. I meant it really clicked for me when i started to get a feeling for charge distribution and how electronegativity of specific ligands changes it, especially to predict what will happen in cases where more than one reaction is possible.
i always thought that the idea of synthons should be taught early on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthon
This does not ring a bell at all - It makes sense to look at it this way around, might have helped back then. But when i remember how old my professor was back then, and looking at how “new” the concept is, i’m pretty sure that he didn’t think too fondly of such newfangled stuff.
It didn’t help that the module had originally 5 hours per week, which was cut down to 3 hours without reducing the material to learn, resulting in a very old-timey approach to the whole module, since there wasn’t much time at all. I learnt most of it audiotaping the lessons while copying what was written on the blackboard, and actually learned it at home.
Eta: I was very proud of my B+ back then, which squarely placed me in the best percentile - like i said, 2/3 were failing grades. I’m pretty sure i still can reproduce stuff like Beta-Oxidation reactions with a bit of time, and it’s been 10 years since i actually used this stuff.
Anything that involves statistical mechanics is just black magic. There should be a Nobel prize just for people who are able to wrap their mind around it.
Oh wow I was expecting something cryptic, but it’s literally like the instructions behind a noodle pack, but for organic chemistry.
Category theorist: hold my beer.
Me: oh it’s a reaction scheme, so they start with this and end up with this. I’ll assume everything in the middle is correct and they get what I asked them.
