The #1 Most Important Organic Chemistry Concept to Master
Last week in a blog post titled, Afraid of Organic Chemistry? Preparation is the Key!, I explained the dangers of trying to memorize your way through Orgo, and how important it is to, instead, understand and apply concepts toward solving problems. And in another post, The 3 Most Important Organic Chemistry Concepts to Learn Early, I outlined three concepts that are particularly deserving of your focus in the first few weeks of the course.
But of all the concepts you’ll be learning in Orgo, what’s the single most important one to master, in order to succeed in the course? Most Orgo professors, myself included, would say reaction mechanisms.
What Are Reaction Mechanisms?
Think of a reaction mechanism like a set of driving directions that your phone app might give you when you’re driving from point A to point B, where you’re told where and when to turn at each step of the way. But instead of a set of driving directions, a reaction mechanism is a set of steps that shows how a reactant molecule transforms into a product molecule.
And instead of steps that tell you where and when to turn while driving, the steps in a reaction mechanism describe small, quick changes to the structure of a molecule. In other words, if you start with the structure of a reactant molecule, and follow the steps that make up the reaction mechanism, you’ll end up with the product molecule for that reaction.
Why, then, are reaction mechanisms so important for success in Orgo? The biggest reason is that they simplify learning organic reactions. That’s because there are only a handful of different types of steps that make up the reaction mechanisms for the hundreds of reactions you’ll be taught in Orgo. And with so few different types of steps that make up reaction mechanisms, the same patterns of steps show up over and over. Because these patterns show up repeatedly for different reactions, mechanisms are what make things manageable when it comes to learning reactions.
It’s easy to simply tell you that you should focus on learning mechanisms in order to have the best success when it comes to learning reactions. But more than simply tell you, my Summer Orgo Prep self-paced short course SHOWS you. The first several modules of this short course are designed to build your command of fundamental and very important concepts, which will allow you to actually understand and work with mechanisms.
Then, we transition into reaction mechanisms, building your mastery of mechanisms in a very scaffolded way. By the end of Summer Orgo Prep, you’ll not only have a stronger appreciation for using mechanisms to learn reactions, you’ll actually have the tools to do so.
