organic's worst fear

[xxxTheDonxxx]

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for those who have taken the dat already...what are the chances that they're going to ask you to know the structure of compounds like .....benzoyl chloride or benzoic acid or one of those weird names. I'm okay with the regular iupac names and I know the chemistry for these coupounds if they give me the structures, but to come up with a structure with those weird names ...i tend to have a hard time. Do they give you the structures of the compouds for all of the reactions. Topscore and DAT achiever have alot of questions where they just give you the names (sometimes it's not even iupac names). comments????

 

[spud_gal]

From what I remember, the naming questions were all pretty straightforward. As for the reactions, most of them do give you the structures, not just the names. They focus a lot on SN1, SN2, E1, and E2 type reactions, so as long as you have those down, you should do great.

 

[lafootdoc]

for those who have taken the dat already...what are the chances that they're going to ask you to know the structure of compounds like .....benzoyl chloride or benzoic acid or one of those weird names. I'm okay with the regular iupac names and I know the chemistry for these coupounds if they give me the structures, but to come up with a structure with those weird names ...i tend to have a hard time. Do they give you the structures of the compouds for all of the reactions. Topscore and DAT achiever have alot of questions where they just give you the names (sometimes it's not even iupac names). comments????

Hey i took the dat like 3 weeks ago and i scored a 25 on the ochem portion. As far as Iupac, i think mine was a pretty simple alkane or alkene. Even if they give you one that has a carbonyl in it, you just have to know where to begin your count. In terms of an acid, you begin your count at the carbon bearing the oxygen. I wouldt really worry bout the iupac too much. I dont think theyre gonna throw in something crazy.

 

[issa]

benzoic acid is a common name, so it is not IUPAC. drawing the structure of benzoic acid is easy.COOH bonded to a benzyne. i can remember all the common names from my organic chemisty class like formaldehye, acetaldehyde,butyraldehyde,.. and many acids and keytones like acetophenone. these are easy to remember if you answer a lot of practice organic questions from the book. i think knowing the names will help you in the dat. who knows what they might ask you in the test.