organic chem and exams

Hi! I was wondering what people here think is the best way to study for an
organic chemistry exam...my finals are coming up soon and ive been studying
Maitland Jones for quite a while now...its difficult to memorize that amount
of material...the questions we are going to get ask for eg. reactions of
aldehydes and ketones or reactions of carboxylic acids etc. so if anyone has
any last minute tips it would be appreciated...

thanks.

gorkin ([Only registered users see links. ]) wrote:
: Hi! I was wondering what people here think is the best way to study for an
: organic chemistry exam...my finals are coming up soon and ive been studying
: Maitland Jones for quite a while now...its difficult to memorize that amount
: of material...the questions we are going to get ask for eg. reactions of
: aldehydes and ketones or reactions of carboxylic acids etc. so if anyone has
: any last minute tips it would be appreciated...

Organikers try to make O-chem difficult for undergrads. It weeds out the
people who should not be chemists or biologists.

The key is the difference in electronegativity between hetero atoms and
carbon. When a carbon has a slight negative charge, it is attracted to
slight positive charges and vice versa.

For example, a carbonyl carbon (i.e. aldehyde or ketone carbon) is
slightly positive due to the oxygen pulling electrons toward it. Any
"nucleophile" (i.e. negatively-charged atom or fragment) will be attracted
to the carbonyl carbon.

Also, any time you can make water, you will make water. Carboxylic acids
combine with amines to form amides and H2O! Esters form from carboxylic
acids and alcohols with the beautiful byproduct of water. H2O is
extremelly thermodynamically stable, and that is often a great driving
force in organic reactions.

As for those crazy E1, E2, SN1, SN2 reactions, remember, the ones with a
"1" take place in acid solution, the ones with a "2" need a basic
environment.

Keep these in mind when memorizing your reactions.


--
--
William "Dave" Thweatt
Robert E. Welsh Postdoctoral Fellow
Chemistry Department
Rice University
Houston, TX
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> Organikers try to make O-chem difficult for undergrads. It weeds out the


Thanks. Yeah the system here is a bit different...we have as many tries as
we want to pass these exams (any exam for that matter), but I would prefer
to pass in one go, of course, since ive acquired pretty good grades thus
far...and im not an undergraduate in chemistry...I think I understand the
principles involved and that makes it quite easy to figure out in an exam
how something like nucleophilic substitution works, but there are so many
oddities and exceptions in there that just remembering the names of all
those reactions is getting the best of me...well, I guess I have a couple of
more tries if I mess this up...

In article <bhg9bi$ni$[Only registered users see links. ].edu>,
[Only registered users see links. ] (William David Thweatt) wrote:
amount
has
Also, if you need to just guess, here are some good answers:

1. Steric hindrance
2. Resonance stabilization
3. Kinetic vs thermodynamic control

"gorkin" <[Only registered users see links. ]> wrote in message news:<bhg6b8$11i$[Only registered users see links. ].fi>...
reactions of



On the last minute, you can make a list of general reactions and few
typical examples, on a separate sheet of paper to review the
reactions for each class of compounds to fecilitate recalling the
reactions in exam(perhaps this is cramming..). You can make your own
mnemonics to help you retain the names of compounds. There is a very
good website in pdf format. It has a summary of about 250 reactions
that are most commonly encountered in organic chemistry course,
unfortunately it is in german,but with a very very limited knowledge
of german one can understand them. If you wish to see it you can visit
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A summary of named reactions in organic chemistry can be found here:
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[Only registered users see links. ]