Question about selection of college courses(O. Chem related)

[Alferd P]

I'm starting my med tech major this fall at OSU, and I have a choice between two quarters of O. Chem or two quarters of Molecular Biochem.

 

Could anyone tell me what the differences in difficulty between the two classes are? According to OSU the class descriptions are:

 

Molecular Biochemistry 311:

 

Basic structures and interactions of biomolecules in health and disease. Relevant organic chemistry included. Topics essential to human nutrition, dietetics, clinical chemistry, nursing, premedical education.

 

Organic Chem 251:

 

Structure, nomenclature, physical properties, preparation, and reactions of hydrocarbons, alcohols, and ethers.

 

I can see the difference in the subject matter itself, but I'm more concerned about the level of difficulty...I want to take the most useful class to my major, but I don't want to stress over a single class. I'm pretty sure I know what to expect with Organic Chem from talking to other students, as it's a pretty universal class that a lot of people take. I guess I am trying to determine if the other class is signicantly more/less difficult.

 

I have asked the departments involved and my counselor but none of them seems to have a good answer for me. I don't know any students there yet either.

 

(I realize that this post essentially amounts to: "what's harder? O. chem or molbiochem?", but I figured I'd at least TRY to be a little less crass)

[RyanJ]

I can see the difference in the subject matter itself' date=' but I'm more concerned about the level of difficulty...I want to take the most useful class to my major, but I don't want to stress over a single class. I'm pretty sure I know what to expect with Organic Chem from talking to other students, as it's a pretty universal class that a lot of people take. I guess I am trying to determine if the other class is signicantly more/less difficult.[/quote']

 

Hi Alferd P! Welcome to SFN

 

The difficulties look pretty much equal from what I can see there... then again how difficult it actually is depends on you, how good you are at learning the work etc.

 

Molecular Biochemistry 311 seems a lot more human-organic oriented while Organic Chem 251 seems to be the "more chemistry course" covering hydrocarbons, naming of compounds etc.

 

Again, what class would be more useful really depends on what you want to do with it... Biochemistry is very useful for things like pharmacology and other subjects of that nature, Organic Chem 251 would be useful for things relating to polymer designs and other related topics, organic chemistry covers a wide range of subjects.

 

Sorry if I am little help...

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[Yggdrasil]

If these are both introductory courses, I'd say that they'd be of similar difficulties. If I were to choose which one may be harder, I would have to say it depends on whether you're better at reasoning out answers (ochem is easier) or whether you're better at just memorizing (biochem is easier). However, I think that it's better to take ochem before taking biochem since ochem will help you somewhat with understanding the logic behind some biosynthetic schemes.

[Alferd P]

Thanks for the replies.

 

Yea, I tend to do well at both memorizing and problem solving but I tend to retain interest in the memorization type classes. My major pretty much leads me to doing labwork in a hospital, so on the surface biochem is looking a little more attractive if it is more of an applied chemistry. Like you said though, I don't want to miss any of the fundamentals of O. Chem either.

 

Right now I suppose I am leaning towards the molecular biochem.

 

However, I really don't understand the difference between Biochem and Molecular Biochem, as they are separate classes.

[jdurg]

Biochemistry is pretty much just organic chemistry but only in regards to what one encounters in a biological system. O-Chem will teach you about all the mechanisms that exist and give you a basic groundwork on various reaction types, etc. Biochemistry will only focus on the mechanisms that play a role in biological systems and will disregard many of the other ones.

 

Put it this way; If you take O-Chem you will learn how to build a house in any environment. If you take Biochemistry you will learn how to build a house but only in specific conditions, yet the house you will build will be leaps and bounds above what others build. The gist of it is, Biochemistry will teach you what you need to know in a biological sense of organic chemistry but won't give you all the tools of o-chem. O-chem will teach you all of the tools but won't specialize on any of them.