ORGANIC CHEMISTRY

[Junior Bakgethisi]

The naming and drawing of Organic structures is tricking me...whats the best way to memorize it...

[Sensei]

10 minutes ago, Junior Bakgethisi said:

whats the best way to memorize it...

Practice makes the master..

 

[DrP]

Not sure about the 'BEST' way - but, like learning anything, repetition can help. Draw the structures out on a piece of paper and label them.  Go back later with a blank sheet and draw them again.  Do this a few times for several days and it will stick with you for a long time.

Can you draw an alcohol, a ketone, an aldehyde, a carboxylic acid, an ester and an epoxy group?  IF not - look them all up and draw these structures on a piece of paper.  Try to remember them and redraw them in 5 mins...  then later in the day...  then the next day, checking your drawings to the ones you know to be correct. 

 

How to convert one group to the other via a chemical reaction, for me anyway, required drawing out all the structures on a large chart and linking each with a line...  along the line was written the chemical reaction pathway to get to the product which was at the other end of the line.....   admittedly I can't remember many of the reaction pathways now, but it has been over 20 years being fair!   The structures shouldn't leave your memory though if you use the knowledge occasionally.

 

In short - draw them out over and over when ever you get a spare 5 mins until you know them. Hope that helps.

 

 

 

1 minute ago, Sensei said:

Practice makes the master..

 

lol  -  yea - that's basically what I was getting at in far fewer words.  Cross post.

Edited March 7, 2018 by DrP

[Area54]

Repetition. Then more repetition. If it doesn't seem to working then you haven't repeated often enough. This rule applies to learning any fundamental concept.

[StringJunky]

Understanding the underlying principles of the subject that you are trying to learn is a big forward step to automatically remembering. In essence, if the principles are the branches of a tree and their associated facts the leaves, where are you going to put the leaves if there are no branches to hang them on, because you haven't learnt the principles? Memorizing. bare facts is harder and requires much repetition because they don't really mean anything . The advantage of understanding principles, over rote learning bare facts, is that they can be applied to novel situations or questions you haven't seen before.

[studiot]

There are two approaches to teaching and learning Organic Chemistry.

 

The traditional approach which I learned at school and many schools still operate.
That is by grouping together and studying many similar compounds together via homologous series.

So using alcohols as an example you learn the comparative properties of methanol, ethanol, butanol, propanol and so on.

The automatic repetition inherent in this of the 'alcohol' part (-OH) helps fix the idea of an alcohol in one's mind, rather as others have said.

 

When I got to university their approach was a big shock because they di things differently.

Organic Chemistry was studied and classified under different heading. Those of reaction types and mechanisms - substitution - esterification - condensation - nucleophilic - electrophilic and so forth. These affect all types of homologous series so these were lumped in together and mixed up. this was the modern approach.

So there you are, try getting an old fashioned textbook (one with chapters labelled aldehydes, ketones, alcohols etc) and reading it.

 

BTW you didn't say what stage you are at.

 

 

[hypervalent_iodine]

Repetition. Nomenclature in particular is like learning another language, but it's systematic. Once you have the basics down, you'll be fine.