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COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCE |
| ORGANIC CHEMISTRY LEARNING RESOURCES @ the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry | |
| TEACH YOURSELF ORGANIC CHEMISTRY by Working Problems |
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Working Problems The ONLY way that you will learn organic chemistry is by working problems. The links below take you to some important practice problems. These problems are a work in progress, and we will be using both these and the textbook problems this semester. Now for an important point, we don't have time to cover all aspects of each topic in lecture, nor should we, otherwise the subject would merely reduce to reproducing on a test what you heard in lecture. This isn't the point. The point is learning how to use what you have learned in a different context. A lot of teaching comes from the problems, there are expanded versions of the concepts you learned in class in the answers to the problems. It is expected that you will have done all of the problems that are assigned here. |
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General Problems | Spectroscopy Problems | Retrosynthesis Problems |
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Visualizing Organic Chemistry Organic molecules are 3-dimensional and you are going to need to learn to visualize and solve problems in 3-dimensions. The best way to do this is to just think about the structures and build models if necessary. Nevertheless, it is sometimes useful to have some things shown to you. The link below takes you to a page of small movie files and other resources designed to address this issue. |
most of these visualizations are in the form of QUICKTIME MOVIES ![]() |
| Bonding & Structure (Basics) | ||
Tetrahedral Geometry ![]() Trigonal Planar Geometry ![]() Linear Geometry ![]() |
Pi-Bonds and Anti-Bonds ![]() Pi-Orbitals in Triple Bonds ![]() |
Rotation and Single Bonds ![]() Isomerism and Double Bonds ![]() |
| Alkanes (3D Structure) | ||
Steric versus Repulsion Effects in Alkane Conformations ![]() Chair-chair interconversion for cis-1,4-dimethylcyclohexane (mpg file, used with kind permission of Professor Stefan Immel, Technical University of Darmstadt) Cyclohexane ![]() Substituted Cyclohexane ![]() |
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| Organic Spectroscopy | ||
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Understanding the Factors that Control Bond Vibrations (Infrared simulation in html and Java) |
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| Alkyl Halides | ||
The Walden Inversion ![]() |
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| Conjugated Systems | ||
Diels-Alder Stereochemistry ![]() Electrocyclic Reactions Using the "Finger and Thumbs"/Aromatic Transition State Theory method ![]() |
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