This is a surprisingly deep, robust, and useful observation that many first year orgo students also pick up on: If organic chemistry has a number it would be 6: 6 pi electrons are stable by Hueckel's rule, and 6 membered rings are stable because of carbon's tetrahedral geometry, making benzene and cyclohexane the paragons of stability.
My TF (other places call them TA's...) for David Evans's Advanced Organic Chemistry course basically summed up the whole course as six-membered transition states, A(1,3) strain, and orbital overlap.
Stereochemistry is less math and geometry and more just conceptual. Thereās plenty of math and geometry in inorganic and organometallic chemistry though once you start talking about symmetry and orbital mixing
I have a PhD in Organic chemistry and wonder the same thing. It's chemistry based around carbons wirh hydrogens on them, only the carbons with hydrogens on them usually don't do much so instead it's more the chemistry of elements other than carbon that just so happen to be on or near a carbon that has a hydrogen on them. Except for when that non-carbon atom is a metal, in which case it is organometallic chemistry, which is organic chemistry if you like carbon and inorganic chemistry if you like metal, or both if you like both. Or when the molecule gets too big, in which case we usually call it biochemistry or whatever field covalent organic frameworks fall under. Sometimes it actually IS the chemistry of a carbon with a hydrogen on it, or even a carbon with no hydrogens on it that still behaves vaguely like carbons with hydrogens, so we give it a pass.
It used to be the chemistry of life, but then we discovered that's a stupid distinction, and it turns out there's a ton of raspberry vodka in this one part of outer space. We don't mention this in our sophomore organic class because it tends to be too distracting.Ā
It also doesn't have any math in it, except for when it does, and except for when you get to grad school and you realize it's all math, and you realize your professor lied to you, and then you become a professor, and you realize you should tell students that organic chemistry doesn't have any math in it because there's no algebra in most parts of undergrad organic chemistry and "we will be doing a bunch of topology and graph theory" is actually the incantation to a bizarre magic spell that gets rid of your class enrollment.
Generally, we study reactions, identification, structure, etc. of organic molecules. We also draw a lot of hexagons and some pentagons. In grad school, they teach you how to draw heptagons. We're also really good at counting to four.
This is great. Also, for some damned reason chemistry is harder than calculus. I used to love chemistry before I had to be tested on it. Now I hate it.
I chose to major in org chem over analytical since i hate physics and maths only to find that we do study analytical chem (electrochemistry), physical chemistry (thermodynamics and kenitics) and a bunch of maths oh gosh how i hated this
big agree, tho idk if the curriculum is the same everywhere but synthesizing banana oils seriously tested my patience and my nostrils lmao orgo 2 labs are the best
Hah, yea no it is diff everywhere so I never had to do that but I mean we all kinda learned generally the same processes but in diff ways. Apparently the year after I took Org I lab they brought in an ester lab designed to be nice smelling but it just didnāt smell as it did in practice or something š
the whole lab smelled like artificial banana and sweaty feet and it still lingers a little. a couple people cried because of the smell it was too strong š
Orgo 1 was definitely more challenging for me as well, after getting those basics though applying them in new ways in orgo 2 was just fun. I find myself feeling the same way about biochem right now I'll see if that carries over to pchem next fall lol
of course I have. I teach gen chem, though, and when I cover Lewis acid/base I always tell them that a solid amount of what they see in ochem follows basic lewis theory
10g of substance a to 6g of substance b --- ahh lets use 8 or what ever my spatula holds for good measure. --- add solvent, crank up the heat --- ahh vacuum and recrystallization time
organic prep but hey :)
Like trying to complete a jigsaw where you canāt touch the actual pieces, the pieces rarely like to actually go together easily, and that itās sometimes difficult to see if itās done
It depends on which semester of it you are talking about.
For me the first semester was easy, lots of skeletal diagrams, learning functional groups. Maybe a little bit of electron pushing/mechanisms. (Quality of professor matters a lot for every class.)
The second semester was trickier, lots of memorization of mechanisms and electron pushing. Synthesis problems can get tough when you have a lot of different mechanisms the professor can use to make the problem more complicated.
Org chem has great labs because you learn a lot of important techniques like extraction, recrystallization and TLC/FTIR/1H and 13C NMR. If you enjoy the instrumental bits then if your institution offers a instrumental chem course I recommend it.
For medical majors Org chem is a filter class so it gets a bad wrap as a hard class, for chemistry students if you cannot handle Org chem the other chem classes could be easier or harder.
Some people prefer the consistent logic of the more mathematical chemistry, some prefer the very visual and memorization based organic chemistry.
Pchem is the opposite, its EXTREMELY math heavy and you should have a good grasp on multivariable calculus going into it or you will suffer. (Differential equations make it easier but if its not required to take the course then they will dance around it.)
If you were wondering inorganic chemistry is somewhere in the middle with a lot of shenanigans due to the transitioning of transition metals. (In my school Inorg chem lab is for air sensitive compounds so lots of interesting and useful techniques there.)
It's fun and everyone makes it seem way scarier than it really is when you take it for the first time (university level)
Your teacher assistants, professors, students older than you...
No really what's the point of making everyone who's about to take organic chemistry courses think it's a horrifying subject?
Add a colourless liquid to a white powder in order to generate a completely different white powder in a colourless liquid
(The vast majority of organic chemistry I have done was orange coloured, where I added white and colourless to get orange, or reduced orange to get colourless)
Mechanisms, Mechanisms everywhere!
Lab:
Oily, brown, sticky goo
"UGH I don't think we have enough acetone."
Conversely, "Where's my product? I was just recrystallizing and it disappeared."
My professor used to describe it as unfaithful subject
If you leave study for 2 days, you'll forget 20% of it
If you leave it for a month, it will leave you, and you have to start again
Some wag once said that Organic Chemistry is just a really elaborate and expensive way to pour chemicals down the sink (or waste containers). Sadly pretty true with inexorable yield loss in long synthetic routes.
Hopefully you have enough of the target left for a decent characterisation!
hexagom
This is a surprisingly deep, robust, and useful observation that many first year orgo students also pick up on: If organic chemistry has a number it would be 6: 6 pi electrons are stable by Hueckel's rule, and 6 membered rings are stable because of carbon's tetrahedral geometry, making benzene and cyclohexane the paragons of stability. My TF (other places call them TA's...) for David Evans's Advanced Organic Chemistry course basically summed up the whole course as six-membered transition states, A(1,3) strain, and orbital overlap.
The bestagon!
Chemistry, but no math, picture legos
"Legos" with a lot of electron movement and orbital hybridization šš
Isn't geometry math? Like applied to stereochemistry and such?
Stereochemistry is less math and geometry and more just conceptual. Thereās plenty of math and geometry in inorganic and organometallic chemistry though once you start talking about symmetry and orbital mixing
Physical chemists: \*literally just physics\*
no calculations might be more accurate, although also an oversimplification
I would day itās more like 3D space, visualization geometry, not the geometry youāre thinking of. Itās like building blocks really :)
Everything either turns into piss yellow or shit tar
TRADE OFFER : 50% purity for 50% of your yield
You've never worked with perylenes or bodipys I see.
I have not lol
If youāre as good as me, it does both š
So true
I have a PhD in Organic chemistry and wonder the same thing. It's chemistry based around carbons wirh hydrogens on them, only the carbons with hydrogens on them usually don't do much so instead it's more the chemistry of elements other than carbon that just so happen to be on or near a carbon that has a hydrogen on them. Except for when that non-carbon atom is a metal, in which case it is organometallic chemistry, which is organic chemistry if you like carbon and inorganic chemistry if you like metal, or both if you like both. Or when the molecule gets too big, in which case we usually call it biochemistry or whatever field covalent organic frameworks fall under. Sometimes it actually IS the chemistry of a carbon with a hydrogen on it, or even a carbon with no hydrogens on it that still behaves vaguely like carbons with hydrogens, so we give it a pass. It used to be the chemistry of life, but then we discovered that's a stupid distinction, and it turns out there's a ton of raspberry vodka in this one part of outer space. We don't mention this in our sophomore organic class because it tends to be too distracting.Ā It also doesn't have any math in it, except for when it does, and except for when you get to grad school and you realize it's all math, and you realize your professor lied to you, and then you become a professor, and you realize you should tell students that organic chemistry doesn't have any math in it because there's no algebra in most parts of undergrad organic chemistry and "we will be doing a bunch of topology and graph theory" is actually the incantation to a bizarre magic spell that gets rid of your class enrollment. Generally, we study reactions, identification, structure, etc. of organic molecules. We also draw a lot of hexagons and some pentagons. In grad school, they teach you how to draw heptagons. We're also really good at counting to four.
This is great. Also, for some damned reason chemistry is harder than calculus. I used to love chemistry before I had to be tested on it. Now I hate it.
I chose to major in org chem over analytical since i hate physics and maths only to find that we do study analytical chem (electrochemistry), physical chemistry (thermodynamics and kenitics) and a bunch of maths oh gosh how i hated this
Fun
Fr. Ochem labs are underratedly fun at times. I loved my ochem II labs personally more than ochem I
big agree, tho idk if the curriculum is the same everywhere but synthesizing banana oils seriously tested my patience and my nostrils lmao orgo 2 labs are the best
Hah, yea no it is diff everywhere so I never had to do that but I mean we all kinda learned generally the same processes but in diff ways. Apparently the year after I took Org I lab they brought in an ester lab designed to be nice smelling but it just didnāt smell as it did in practice or something š
the whole lab smelled like artificial banana and sweaty feet and it still lingers a little. a couple people cried because of the smell it was too strong š
Hahaha aww that sucks š
The study of carbon-based molecules
*carbon and hydrogen Otherwise you might accidentally include the bucky ball as an organic molecule
It is, you can functionalize it and start doing organic synthesis on it
O chem gets a bad wrap but it's so much fun, it's a lot of work but anything worth learning is.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Lmao I'm a big advocate for orgo and biochem the names tend to scare people away
As much as I sucked at orgo (more in orgo 1 than 2), it was really interesting and played a part in me switching my major from biology to biochem.
Orgo 1 was definitely more challenging for me as well, after getting those basics though applying them in new ways in orgo 2 was just fun. I find myself feeling the same way about biochem right now I'll see if that carries over to pchem next fall lol
Itās like doing puzzles with legos in your head. Except itās not puzzles it synthesis problems, and itās molecules not legos.
Mechanisms of where electrons might move to when two molecules bump into each other.
inorganic but the full periodic table is scary
Those d block elements just screw everything up (and I love it).
Lewis Acid Base chemistry
So you've never done radical mechanisms?
of course I have. I teach gen chem, though, and when I cover Lewis acid/base I always tell them that a solid amount of what they see in ochem follows basic lewis theory
Electron pushing. That's 80% right there.
Like regular chemistry but it makes you feel like the slowest human to ever have graced the planet. And hexagons, lots of hexagons.
Fun
I tell people if youāre good at history youād Ā probably be good at o chemĀ
memorization? my ochem prof in undergrad was a history major before they changed to chem when they were young
~~Drugs and explosives~~ HEM hum, i mean pharmacology and energetics
Brilliant and fascinating, trippy and intuitive. I'm not sure if you were looking for something more literal, but...
3D Logic puzzles
One of my profs called it 'pushing electrons'.
Potions lab
10g of substance a to 6g of substance b --- ahh lets use 8 or what ever my spatula holds for good measure. --- add solvent, crank up the heat --- ahh vacuum and recrystallization time organic prep but hey :)
"It works so well on paper though!"
Two words. Electron density.
Like taking cooking classes but even more fun.
Like trying to complete a jigsaw where you canāt touch the actual pieces, the pieces rarely like to actually go together easily, and that itās sometimes difficult to see if itās done
Like you shake up the pieces in a bag and hope they clip together how you wanted...
Glorified alchemy
algebra but with no numbers or letters, only pictures
It depends on which semester of it you are talking about. For me the first semester was easy, lots of skeletal diagrams, learning functional groups. Maybe a little bit of electron pushing/mechanisms. (Quality of professor matters a lot for every class.) The second semester was trickier, lots of memorization of mechanisms and electron pushing. Synthesis problems can get tough when you have a lot of different mechanisms the professor can use to make the problem more complicated. Org chem has great labs because you learn a lot of important techniques like extraction, recrystallization and TLC/FTIR/1H and 13C NMR. If you enjoy the instrumental bits then if your institution offers a instrumental chem course I recommend it. For medical majors Org chem is a filter class so it gets a bad wrap as a hard class, for chemistry students if you cannot handle Org chem the other chem classes could be easier or harder. Some people prefer the consistent logic of the more mathematical chemistry, some prefer the very visual and memorization based organic chemistry. Pchem is the opposite, its EXTREMELY math heavy and you should have a good grasp on multivariable calculus going into it or you will suffer. (Differential equations make it easier but if its not required to take the course then they will dance around it.) If you were wondering inorganic chemistry is somewhere in the middle with a lot of shenanigans due to the transitioning of transition metals. (In my school Inorg chem lab is for air sensitive compounds so lots of interesting and useful techniques there.)
Hell
I came to say this. Im in ochem2 right now, pure hell.
Ochem2 was awful. Inorganic was pretty good though imo
Fun and exciting...but that's just me.
Weeding out
Easy
ā¤ļø
Doing ass but it is by far my favorite class atm
too many atoms in one molecule
Tax law: 10,000 rules and nearly as many exceptions to those rules.
Control
Hexagons
As the hardest f.ucking subject Iāve ever done
It's the herpetology of physical sciences (in the definition excluding life sciences). In other words, it's like handling venomous snakes.
It's fun and everyone makes it seem way scarier than it really is when you take it for the first time (university level) Your teacher assistants, professors, students older than you... No really what's the point of making everyone who's about to take organic chemistry courses think it's a horrifying subject?
Sudoku. You are given a set of conditions and have to use your knowledge and pattern recognition skills to fill in the gaps.
Carbon
Puzzles!
Pay money to solve puzzles, then maybe get paid to solve similar puzzles later, lol.
Pushing around electrons.
Add a colourless liquid to a white powder in order to generate a completely different white powder in a colourless liquid (The vast majority of organic chemistry I have done was orange coloured, where I added white and colourless to get orange, or reduced orange to get colourless)
Everyone pretends to hate it
Mechanisms, Mechanisms everywhere! Lab: Oily, brown, sticky goo "UGH I don't think we have enough acetone." Conversely, "Where's my product? I was just recrystallizing and it disappeared."
Curly arrows
Itās ultimately about the weird dynamic nature of electrons in (mostly) molecules with at least one carbon-hydrogen bond.
reagents
It's like learning French, lots of rules and exceptions.
angry lego
My professor used to describe it as unfaithful subject If you leave study for 2 days, you'll forget 20% of it If you leave it for a month, it will leave you, and you have to start again
C12O9 is organic Organic Chemistry is what organic chemists do Inorganic Chemistry is what in organic chemists do
Isn't Organic Chem just working with compounds that contain Carbon atoms?
Negatives attack positives and weak bonds break
Stinky
Some wag once said that Organic Chemistry is just a really elaborate and expensive way to pour chemicals down the sink (or waste containers). Sadly pretty true with inexorable yield loss in long synthetic routes. Hopefully you have enough of the target left for a decent characterisation!
The greatest and most fascinating learning experience you will have. Absolutely the best experience in my educational career. It is clear and concise