Teaching a mechanistically organized course has many benefits. For example, I am able to spend less class time on nomenclature. This semester, I assigned nomenclature “chapters” 1-3 for the students to read outside of class, arranging them among chapters 1–10 of the text. This meant that I spent only 25% of lecture time explaining nomenclature. … Continue reading Time Well Spent
From Cover to Cover
As of a couple hours ago, I have not only completed my first full year as a lecturer at Northern Arizona University, but I have also completed my first full cycle of Karty's text; from Fall 2015 to Spring 2016, from Organic Chemistry I to Organic Chemistry II, from front-cover to back-cover of Organic Chemistry: … Continue reading From Cover to Cover
The Mechanism Did It!
I finally finished the book last night. In the two years since we adopted Karty, I have taught the first-semester course three times. However, due to the oddities of academic scheduling, this spring was my first time teaching our second-semester course with the text. So, metaphorically speaking, I finally got my chance to find out … Continue reading The Mechanism Did It!
My Surprising Favorite Second-Semester Chapter
My favorite chapter of second-semester organic chemistry is perhaps more surprising to me than anyone else, considering all the great mechanisms and reactions that fill the second-half of Karty's textbook. My enjoyment of Chapter 16 (“Structure Determination 2: Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and Mass Spectrometry”) is most likely due to my own experiences analyzing complex … Continue reading My Surprising Favorite Second-Semester Chapter
Karty Makes the Reaction Notebook Easy
A common complaint I have gotten from students for years centers on the “Predict the Products” section of my exams. While they can derive every mechanism for every part of every question (late in second semester, each of my 5-6 Predict the Product questions might have 3-4 reactions in sequence), they don’t have time to … Continue reading Karty Makes the Reaction Notebook Easy
Spectroscopy: Seeing (and Using) the Big Picture
Like many other instructors, I do the majority of spectroscopy instruction in my laboratory. It seems natural to integrate spectroscopy problems into lab exercises, and to use the molecules we make as the platform for understanding how to analyze them. Most organic texts I have seen introduce spectroscopy towards the end of the first semester … Continue reading Spectroscopy: Seeing (and Using) the Big Picture
Cutting off the Tail
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When to Introduce Conjugate Addition: Sometimes More is More
There were two places in Joel’s text that surprised me: where 1,2 versus 1,4 addition to a conjugated diene appeared—Chapter 11—and where direct versus conjugate nucleophilic addition to polar pi bonds appeared—Chapter 17. Both of these chapters introduce basic concepts and then expand all the way to complex applications, much further than a functional-group organized … Continue reading When to Introduce Conjugate Addition: Sometimes More is More
How the Ten Elementary Steps Unified My Course
For years I told my students they shouldn’t merely memorize a list of reactions. But what were my actions really telling them? In the last textbook I used, the alkene chapter began with nomenclature, then covered Markovnikov addition of H-X and water, halogenation and halohydrin formation, and ended with hydroboration/oxidation. The next chapter that covered … Continue reading How the Ten Elementary Steps Unified My Course
Building on their Knowledge: From Atoms to Multi-Step Synthesis to Curing Sick Puppies
Karty’s mechanistic approach to organic chemistry provides the content organization to facilitate student success. In a functional group approach students are more likely to apply an incorrect mechanism to solve a synthetic problem. This is because classification by functional group does not provide an organizational level that allows students to classify reactivity. Organization by functional … Continue reading Building on their Knowledge: From Atoms to Multi-Step Synthesis to Curing Sick Puppies