o. chem reactions - how??

[TXpredent]

How did yall memorize all of these O. Chem reactions? Did yall use notecards? Looking at the reagents and trying to understand them doesn't really help right now lol

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[Bis-GMA111]

understand basic mechanisms. i remember distinctly memorizing like 4-5 mechanisms for all of the orgo reactions and it helped. make note of patterns in reactions and look at it that way. then memorize odd ball reactions that you wouldn't commonly see (i.e. claisen condensation)

 

[ttpharm]

Understand carboxylic acid derivative reactivities and you could be able to determine all of those carboxylic reactions instead of trying to memorize each individual reactions.

From stable to least stable

carboxylic acid > amide > ester > anhydride > acyl chloride
Can only convert from least stable -> stable.


For example:
Instead of memorizing acyl chloride + amine -> amide and then having to memorize that amides can't convert to acyl chlorides unless converting the amide to a carboxylic acid and then using SOCl2. You could know that, in addition to other carboxylic derivative reactions, by just understanding the stabilities above.

 

[TXpredent]

yeah i've got the chart that Chad drew out, that helps a lot. I just have a hard time recognizing all the other stuff. I get a lot of them confused even and for whatever reason when I go from my notes to a practice test the reactions look totally different to me lol.

 

[ttpharm]

yeah i've got the chart that Chad drew out, that helps a lot. I just have a hard time recognizing all the other stuff. I get a lot of them confused even and for whatever reason when I go from my notes to a practice test the reactions look totally different to me lol.

Here are some guidelines for a couple of rxns I use

Carbonyls have a partial positive carbon (electrophile) because its bound to an electronegative oxygen and something thats negatively charged (nucleophile) will most likely attack it.

For epoxides. In acidic solutions, the oxygen will be protonated and it will have a postive charge. The nucleophile will attack the most substituted carbon because its partially positive and the most substituted stabilizes the partially positive charge. However, in basic solutions, the nucleophile attacks the less substituted carbon because it has less steric hindrance.

For alkenes and alkynes, something will be added most of the time markovnikov with some anti markovnikov exceptions. Just remember the exceptions such as BH3THF rxn or the (Sia)2BH rxn

For reductive and oxidative reactions, actually look at the compound thats doing the reducing or oxidizing. Students get so caught up in memorizing that they don't even think about what they're using. For instance, NaBH4 or LiAlH4. Just by looking at the compound, you can see that it has hydrogens so its probably going to reduce the other compound. Now look at oxidizing reactions using KMnO4. It has oxygens, so its going to oxidize the other compound.

My methods are informal and may not always work, but it has worked for me.

 

[white fang]

I straight up memorized all the reactions for the DAT using notecards. Every single one that I could find. I almost got a perfect on the DAT O-Chem but I am struggling a bit in O-Chem 2 (thank God for huge curves) now since memorization does not work as well in class. Especially for synthesis problems.

 

[fuqele]

I think doing Destroyer problems really helped me. I made notecards for every reaction I am not entirely sure of. The reactions appear over and over again in destroyer, so you'll remember everything at the end.

 

[wired202808]

I used the Destroyer roadmaps and literally rewrote them by hand to help memorize everything.

 

[Dotoday]

Chads videos, Kaplan has plenty of practice, Destroyer, Odyssey. You can also go to your organic textbooks to do more problems. Ybe nest and the only way to master organic is doing as many problems as possible.

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[crax]

I went through my kaplan book, and rewrote it only copying out the reactions & mechanisms onto looseleaf labelled by topic. I write big, and possibly had about 12 double sided pages of reactions / mechanism, each one was labelled. It took about 15 minutes to fully go through it, and eventually it would be the case where i would be able to skip most of that were similar oxidations / reductions / simple additions. For most of them i just knew what would "happen" and could take a stab at the why if i was forced too. Go over it twice a day for two weeks and then you have all the reactions down.

Most of the reagents become very familiar and associate with certain reactions as well.