The only way of mastering any topic in Organic Chemistry is doing lots of practice problems. And I know, seeing my students, that starting to work on a practice problem may be the hardest part as you don’t know where to start. It is difficult to visualize what where the double bond would be moved if you follow the five curved arrows crammed in one step. Here is the trick:
We are always told to think before doing something. Fair enough. But let me tell you, it is also strangely enough, that in Organic Chemistry, it is often better to draw and then think about what you did (not in the lab though). It is much easier to have a structure in front of you and check for errors and improvements.
Do the first step, take the pencil and you will see that the ball gets rolling.
You have all these Organic Chemistry Practice Problems waiting to be solved!
Fischer esterification is the acid-catalyzed reaction of carboxylic acids and alcohols: Before we get into the details of this reaction, remember that there are other ways of preparing esters. For example, the carboxylic acid can be converted into … Read more
Acyl chlorides are very useful in reactions with organometallics because they can selectively be converted into alcohols or ketones. For example, Grignard reagents will react with acyl chlorides to produce alcohols, while organocuprates (Gilman’s), also known as lithium dialkyl cuprates, … Read more
Acyl chlorides, being the most reactive among carboxylic acid derivatives, undergo a wide variety of nucleophilic acyl substitution reactions. A quick reminder, in a nucleophilic acyl substitution, the leaving group is replaced by a nucleophile by the addition-elimination mechanism: … Read more
Acyl chlorides can be prepared by reacting carboxylic acids with thionyl chloride (SOCl2), phosphorous trichloride (PCl3) or phosphorous pentachloride (PCl5): In the bases of this transformation is the conversion of the OH group into a good leaving. For … Read more
One of the most common carboxylic acids is the acetic acid which has a wide range of application starting from vinegar and going all the way to the synthesis of organic materials including vinyl acetate, which is used as a polymer … Read more
In the previous two posts, we have talked about the number of NMR signals and the multiplicity which is the signal splitting based on the n + 1 rule. Let’s quickly summarize what these two features are. First, the number … Read more
NMR signals may have different number of peaks (the number of lines). This is called the splitting of the signal or the multiplicity. Signal splitting is arguably the most unique and important feature that makes NMR spectroscopy a comprehensive tool … Read more
At times, solving an NMR problem leads to two or more plausible structures satisfying the given data. We have seen that 13C NMR is usually decoupled and therefore, there is no splitting of signals which limits the information we can … Read more
Let’s start with the good news! Unlike the 1H NMR, there is no integration and signal splitting in 13C NMR spectroscopy. We are only looking at the number of signals that each non-equivalent carbon atom gives as a single peak! … Read more
In the previous post, we talked about homotopic, enantiotopic, diastereotopic, and constitutionally heterotopic protons. In short, these are all about whether a set of protons is in the same environment or not, and for NMR purposes, it helps us determine … Read more
