Purpose of this website and disclaimers

Purpose

The goal of this website is to help students learn HOW to do problems. Most textbooks and lectures on organic chemistry focus on teaching the information and concepts. What is often missing are directions and advice on how to apply these concepts to answer questions. Students, after all, are mainly graded on how well they can do problems and not on how well they can remember the textbook or understand the lectures.  

The types of problems that students confront in organic chemistry are unique, such as assigning formal charges or R/S chirality, and most students have not practiced or even seen these types of problems previously.  By comparison, students have had a lot of practice in solving math problems, writing essays, or memorizing vocabulary for a foreign language. This often involved step-by-step tutorials and shortcuts. This website tries to provide similar types of assistance for students trying to learn organic chemistry. Strategies and step-by-step instructions are provided to solve most of the common types of organic chemistry problems. 

Content

This knowledge base is a collection of answers to the question: How do I (fill in the blank with a type of problem)?  One of the challenges in organic chemistry is that it does not simply require the memorization of information and concepts.  It also requires the application of the concepts to new situations and in unique combinations.  This is something that many students struggle with and, in many cases, do not know how to start or how to study.

Disclaimers

1. This website is not meant to be comprehensive.  It does not cover all the topics.  Instead, the website focuses on key fundamental topics, advice on how to avoid common mistakes, and specific types of problems that students have had difficulty with in the past.  Most of the modules were developed in direct response to past students’ questions and needs.  After answering the question “How do I do this type of problem?“ from multiple students, I wrote up handouts to try to explain how I think they should approach and answer a problem.  This website is, therefore, just a collection of advice and answers.
2. The site is constantly being expanded and edited in response to each new class. As a consequence, there are some typos and errors. I would like to use the excuse that English is not my first language but, unfortunately, that would be a lie. I try to correct errors as they are identified. If you think that you have found an error or typo in the site, please e-mail me. Also, if you have suggestions for how to improve the site or suggestions on new topics, please contact me via the comment section or by e-mail (my address is at the bottom of each page).
3. I have stretched the truth in some of the explanations in order to simplify the answers and to make them more self-consistent. One difficulty in teaching organic chemistry is that it is an inexact science with a lot of gray areas and conflicting rules. If we point out all of the gray areas and the exceptions, we end up spending all of our time explaining and learning these aberrations.  I have chosen to make sweeping definitive statements and rules, which are correct most of the time. However, these same rules are also wrong some of the time. This seemed the better option for students who have limited time to understand a complex topic.