The 3 Most Important Organic Chemistry Concepts to Learn Early
One of the biggest things that makes Orgo different from other courses is how interdependent the concepts and ideas are throughout the entire course. Just about everything you’ll learn later in the course depends critically on stuff you learn early in the course—foundational concepts and ideas.
There’s a decent amount of foundational material that’s important for Orgo, but I want you to be aware of three of the most important ones to learn very early on; they can really help set you up for a lot of good success for material that comes later in the course.
Each of these is a separate lesson in the first Organic Chemistry module of my Summer Orgo Prep self-paced short course.
1) Drawing Lewis dot structures of relatively large and unsymmetric molecules.
In a General Chemistry course, you’re taught a step-by-step process for drawing a Lewis structure for a relatively small molecule (typically with fewer than five total atoms), which is often symmetric. But in Orgo, molecules tend to be substantially larger (often 15 to 20 atoms, or more), and often they’re not symmetric. For these kinds of molecules, that step-by-step process from General Chemistry doesn’t work. You need a new system for drawing their Lewis structures accurately, and that’s what I present in this lesson.
2) Drawing and interpreting shorthand notations for molecules.
There’s a lot of drawing molecules in Orgo (a lot!). So chemists developed various shorthand notations for drawing molecules more quickly, two of which are condensed formulas and line structures. These shorthand notations are taught early in Orgo courses, and they are used frequently throughout the course, but often you’re expected to learn them very quickly, and sometimes without much along the way to help you learn them. This can be dangerous, because any misinterpretation of a shorthand notation can result in the wrong answer!
For this reason, this lesson in my Summer Orgo Prep self-paced short course takes you through the learning of these shorthand notations much more methodically, and in a more scaffolded way, to help you learn. And by learning these shorthand notations better early, you’ll be in a better position to avoid mistakes, and to ultimately have better success in Orgo.
3) Drawing resonance structures.
Resonance structures are very important in Orgo, for two reasons.
- First, resonance structures tell us a lot about the ways that molecules behave, which helps us understand reactions.
- Second, working with resonance structures in Orgo demands using what’s called curved arrow notation. And curved arrow notation becomes really important for chemical reactions later on.
Unfortunately, the General Chemistry treatment of resonance structures is typically limited to cases with fewer than five total atoms, and often they have symmetry (remember that organic molecules are often much larger and unsymmetric). And in General Chemistry, you typically don’t learn to work with curved arrow notation. Even more unfortunate is that many Organic Chemistry textbooks rush through teaching you how to draw resonance structures, presenting just a few basics and a few examples.
In my Summer Orgo Prep self-paced short course, on the other hand, I present things more thoroughly, and in a more scaffolded way, to help you learn. And I show you an in-depth, step-by-step guide to drawing resonance structures, which you can rely on. Mastering drawing resonance structures early will help put you in a position of strength when it comes to learning reactions later on.
In Summary
Having a strong foundation is a huge key to success in Orgo. And by taking advantage of my Summer Orgo Prep self-paced short course, these three concepts go a long way toward building that foundation, even before classes begin.
