Three years ago, as a first-time teacher, I took over for the previous organic chemistry professor at our university, including the textbook he was using. It was one of the most popular books organized by functional groups. After surviving through my first-year teaching, I sensed that it was confusing mechanistically. Seeing how the reaction worked
Tag: Organic Chemistry
Students are Doin’ it for Themselves
As several contributors to this blog have pointed out, Joel Karty’s text introduces biochemistry topics early in the course through supplementary sections at the end of most chapters titled, “The Organic Chemistry of Biomolecules.” Many instructors have lauded this early inclusion of biomolecular topics as a motivator for biology majors and pre-professional students; one that
A Racemization Revelation
In my experience, when students are writing a reaction mechanism, the most common error is to form a strong base under acidic conditions or vice versa. I stress the importance of paying attention to reaction conditions in lecture, but the “function group” based textbook previously used at Western Washington University did not contain a section
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:
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
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
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
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
Cutting off the Tail
testing
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
