You will build on what you learned in your first semester of organic chemistry

The second part of organic chemistry, just like any other second semester class, builds on what you have learned so for.

Now that you have learned the basics of how to put molecules together, you will learn more reactions. Check out Change How You Learn Organic Chemistry to see a step-by-step process for solving reaction questions.

So… here are some things to keep in mind when taking this class:

Focus on the functional groups

  • These are the reactive parts of the molecules

Find trends or similarities in reactions and functional groups

  • Oxidation/Reduction, Addition/Elimination, …and so on

Focus on how to use these reactions/functional groups  to come up with a multi-step synthesis

  • How to build a specific molecule with what you have learned

Know your functional groups – I can’t state this enough!

You’ll see that I put a strong emphasis on functional groups. This is because without them, no productive chemistry could be accomplished. I will state this again:

The key behind understanding organic chemistry is that it revolves around functional groups; they are the most important factor in building molecules.

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