How Helena Aced Organic Chemistry
How Helena Got 93 In Organic Chemistry An Australian reader, Helena, recently wrote to say she’d earned a 93 in her organic chemistry class as
Read moreTop 10 Skills To Master Before An Organic Chemistry 2 Final
Now that pretty much the entire course has been covered, maybe it’s helpful to go back and highlight some of the key skills you should
Read moreFrom a “Drop” To B+ in Org 2 – How A Hard Working Student Turned It Around
How do you go from being clueless in exams to feeling confident? I got the following email last week from a student who we’ll call
Read moreHow Serge Aced Organic Chemistry
Over the past few weeks I’ve been corresponding with loyal reader Serge, who was happy to report to me recently that his exam grades are
Read moreOn Cats, Part 2: Cat Line Diagrams
When this blog was about organic chemistry, I’d never stoop so low as to put cute pictures of cats on my website to drive traffic.
Read moreAlcohols – Nomenclature and Properties
Alcohol Nomenclature, Properties, and Structure In this next series of posts we are going to discuss the reactions of alcohols. As a functional group, alcohols
Read moreAlcohols Can Act As Acids Or Bases (And Why It Matters)
Alcohols: The Conjugate Acid Is A Better Leaving Group, and The Conjugate Base Is A Better Nucleophile In the last post we explored some of the properties and
Read moreAlcohols – Acidity and Basicity
Acid-Base Reactions Of Alcohols Alcohols are mild acids. Typical aliphatic (i.e. “alkyl”) alcohols such as ethanol, isopropanol, and t-butanol have a pKa of about 16-18, making
Read moreThe Williamson Ether Synthesis
The Williamson Ether Synthesis In the Williamson Ether Synthesis, an alkyl halide (or sulfonate, such as a tosylate or mesylate) undergoes nucleophilic substitution (SN2) by an alkoxide to give an ether.
Read moreEthers From Alkenes, Tertiary Alkyl Halides and Alkoxymercuration
When The Williamson Doesn’t Work: Synthesis of Tertiary Ethers From Alkenes, SN1 Reactions, and Alkoxymercuration In the last two posts we’ve been discussing the Williamson
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