CHE 232-001, Spring 2019

Exams, Tips, Handouts, & Keys

Advice on how to do well in this course.

Handouts

• How to go about drawing resonance structures.

• Stereochemistry handouts.

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

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

• Synthetic interconversions of carboxylic acid derivatives.

• Synthetic interconversions of alcohols and carbonyl compounds.

• Carboxylic acid derivative interconversion reactions in peptide synthesis.

• Explanation of the stereochemical course of the Wittig reaction.

• Reaction conditions for different kinds of carbonyl reactions.

• How you know whether dehydration follows an aldol reaction.

• The aldol reaction catalyzed by enamines in vivo.

• How Claisen reactions are used in polyketide synthesis.

• Mechanism of pyruvate dehydrogenase.

• C–C bond-forming reactions we know and love, and how to use them in synthesis problems.

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

• Elsewhere:

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

  • Some history of 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.

Dr. Grossman's lecture notes

I will post my notes after each chapter or set of lectures. Remember, these are my raw notes, so I do not guarantee their accuracy and completeness.

Coming...