CHE 236

Tips & Handouts

ACE Organic

Instructions on registering with ACE.

Handouts

• How to go about drawing resonance structures.

• Hydrogen-bonding in biopolymers:

  • Three-dimensional α helix representation.

  • Three-dimensional β sheet representation.

  • More three-dimensional protein structure representations.

  • Three-dimensional B-form DNA representation.

• Stereochemistry handouts.

• How to go about drawing mechanisms, including free-radical chain mechanisms.

• A variety of useful chemical calculation programs, including a mechanism calculator, a functional group finder, a hybridization calculator, and a program that names pericyclic reactions.

• William H. Reusch's Virtual Textbook of Organic Chemistry.

• For African-American History Month, some prominent African-Americans in organic chemistry:

  • Film about pioneering African-American Ph.D. organic chemist Percy Julian. And a shorter, NSFW version of the same story from the Drunk History series.

  • Article about pioneering brothers William and Lawrence Knox, accomplished African-American Ph.D. chemists.

  • The first African-American to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry (from University of Illinois in 1916), St. Elmo Brady, was from Louisville!

• Substitution and elimination handouts.
  • Instructions for drawing substitution and elimination products.
  • Instructions for determining whether substitution or elimination will occur.

• Synthetic interconversions of carboxylic acid derivatives.

• Synthetic interconversions of alcohols and carbonyl compounds.

• Organic reactions in biology:

  • Carboxylic acid derivative interconversion reactions in peptide synthesis.

  • The aldol reaction catalyzed by enamines in vivo.

  • How Claisen reactions are used in polyketide synthesis.

  • Mechanism of pyruvate dehydrogenase.

• How you know whether dehydration follows an aldol reaction.