COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCE
ORGANIC CHEMISTRY LEARNING RESOURCES @   the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
TEACH YOURSELF ORGANIC CHEMISTRY by Working Problems

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.

General Problems | Spectroscopy Problems | Retrosynthesis Problems

 

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 
Organic Spectroscopy
Understanding the Factors that Control Bond Vibrations (Infrared simulation in html and Java)
Alkyl Halides
The Walden Inversion 
Conjugated Systems
Diels-Alder Stereochemistry 
Electrocyclic Reactions Using the "Finger and Thumbs"/Aromatic Transition State Theory method 

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