<p>D is taking organic chemistry this semester and is working extremely hard on it.</p>
<p>As a 1975 Political Science & American History major, just what is it about organic that makes is so hard?</p>
<p>At many colleges O.C. is known as the "weed out" course for pre-meds. It is essential and part of the core science preparation that virtually all life science majors need to continue on to higher level coursework, whether pre-med major or not.</p>
<p>IMHO, it's because Organic is the FIRST chemistry course in which two elements combine to form MANY compounds. Prior to Organic one mixes Sodium and Chlorine to get table salt every time. In Organic one can mix Carbon and Hydrogen to get dozens of different compounds. Some of these compounds contain single bonds and some have multiple bonds. Some, like the benzene ring, circle back on themselves.</p>
<p>Most of us are familiar with non organic chemistry ie water is H20, Salt is NACL. We simply memorize the formula and interactions with various other chemicals.</p>
<p>In simple terms, organic chem involves much more complex chemical structures. Therefore, more complex structures make rote memorization much more difficult.</p>
<p>The quantity of the material covered in an organic chemistry course is staggering. Those carbons, hydrogens, and oxygens can combine in an astonishing variety of ways.</p>
<p>I once asked this of my chemistry Ph.D friend, he said there were three reasons, one was the number of relations involved as has been mentioned, the amount of memorization required, particularly initially was much greater, and few professors, even those who understand it quite well and who are entertaining lecturers and get high student ratings know how to teach it very well. He said providing examples is only part of the story, supplying non-examples varying in nuanced ways from the examples in order to show differences was more important.</p>
<p>As a biochemistry major, I adored organic chemistry. All those molecules and so many subtle differences in behavior. Methanol will kill you (CH3OH) but ethanol (CH3CH2OH) is a pleasure (in reasonable quantities). </p>
<p>Organic chemistry is about pieces and building blocks. There is no shortcut for the heavy memorization work of those pieces. To continue the example above: 'meth' as a prefix means a single carbon group; 'eth' means two carbon groups. Methane is CH4; ethane is C2H6; and ethanol means two carbon groups and an alcohol ending (OH).... As I said, no substitute for memorization. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, memorization is a skill that is neglected in schools these days. Memorizing poetry and Shakespeare is not as common as it once was (except among theater types). </p>
<p>And further, once the blocks are memorized, the combinations have even more names. There are amino acids (an organic acid with an 'amine' group)--and they all have irregular names.</p>
<p>Organic chemistry, like biology, is all about the vocabulary. It is worth noting that both o-chem and bio require learning more vacabulary in the first section than is required in the average beginning foreign language course.</p>
<p>In my first organic chemistry course, the instructor told us to take careful notes, then rewrite them in their entirety THAT EVENING and make sure they were correct. It helped.</p>
<p>LW, ditto. Made me a lawyer instead of a doctor (like a lot of people). I actually got through semester 1 with a low B, but semester 2 was a disaster. Salvaged a C by working as hard as I ever have. It's just a lot of material and it's complicated. You really have to "get it", and get it early. I think Organic is extraordinarily difficult at the huge research universities where it's difficult to get help from the professor or even the TAs, who are too busy running the labs -- actually, I really liked the orgo labs, but the course itself was brutal.</p>
<p>I loved organic - it is sooooo, organic!</p>
<p>Imagine this, you begin learning Japanese - perhaps a year or two, and then you have to work crosswords and logic puzzles in Japanese. That is an out there analogy, but not too far off. Organic has it's own huge vocabulary and nomenclature with a big set of rules about how the names are derived, and what the name says about the nature and the behavior of the compound, sort of like learning a language. Then later you learn to do syntheses, which are sort of like logic puzzles, or very sophisticated proofs from geometry, how do you take these compounds and get to compound X using these all these rules and conditions that you just learned.</p>
<p>The reason why med schools look so closely at organic grades is not because the knowledge is so necessary - you need it for biochem, yes, but I don't remember any of the minutiae of either organic or biochem, I go look it up - but because the combination of memorizing vast quantities of rules with the intellectual exercise of writing out syntheses is one of the closest approximations to the type of learning in early med school - or at least that is the way it used to be.</p>
<p>This has been a very informative thread - thank you, all!</p>
<p>Atually, DMD77, if you really understand the chemistry, you don't need to memorize so much. </p>
<p>In your example on naming, for instance, maybe you noticed the commonality of meth* = 1 carbon, eth* = 2 carbons, and so forth? In fact, there's a whole subdiscipline regarding nomenclature and keeping it consistent.</p>
<p>Yes, there is a lot of new material to absorb, especially a lot of new terms for structural parts, reagents (remember grignard reagents?) and such.</p>
<p>But, IMHO, the bigger problem is precisely that kids just try to memorize their way through the material instead of understanding it. If you truly understand the science, you can predict and derive most of what you need.</p>
<p>An example of what I mean is my experience in biochemistry. As a chem undergrad, I knew O Chem pretty well, as well as some of the underlying p-chem. When I went to grad school in the life sciences, I had to catch up with a year of biochem. While other kids were struggling to remember the various parts of the krebs cycle, I'd just figure it out as I needed. After all, it was pretty basic O-chem helped out by some enzyme specificity. Just a series of electron transfers, nucleophilic substitutions and such (don't hold me to the details, it's been a few decades...)</p>
<p>I do agree that synthesis is a lot like a logic puzzle. And it can be tough because there may be more than one path to the answer. But that can be the most fun.</p>
<p>I also well remember the labs, with unstable intermediate products, holes in the ceiling from others mishaps, bench fires and such. But, some of the crystals from purifications were beautiful.</p>
<p>Now I remember why I decided I better look at law school, although it was the calculus class taught by the Chinese national that did me in. I couldn't understand a word he was saying. I never got anywhere near organic chemistry, or any other science class for that matter.</p>
<p>Thanks to all who replied. I now have a better understanding of what my D is in for this semester (and next, I believe).</p>
<p>Yep, you really made today a bummer by reminding me of the torture which was O(H) Chem. I struggled through with a C I think and was very happy to get that.</p>
<p>Learning the nomenclature was easy and straight forward. However I never was able to attain a decent understanding of the myriad of systhesis reactions which were dependent on intermediate reaction steps, temperature, ambient conditions, and many other factors which time has obliterated from my brain. It was like trying to learn some twisted logic puzzle.</p>
<p>The one vivid memory was my futile lab attempt to synthesis phenol. Went through each step carefully and got nada. Went through the same steps meticulously with my lab instructor and, ta da, nothing!!!! It left me frustrated with an F for that lab and a lab instructor scratching his head. Oh yes, I broke two thermometers in one lab session trying to insert it through a rubber stopper. The look I got from the supply room staff person was not good.</p>
<p>UMDad,
"it was the calculus class taught by the Chinese national that did me in. I couldn't understand a word he was saying"</p>
<p>-- this is actually a big problem in American universities: not enough Americans teaching and going into sciences/math. It's hurting us in many ways, including that accents are turning off prospective sciences/math students -- and the fact that in the past, these foreign nationals would have stayed in the US and continued their work here. Today, many of them choose to return to their home countries - thus doubly depriving the US of sciences/math talent.</p>
<p>my recollection of o-chem is summed up as "here's this 600 page book -- memorize <em>everything</em> in it". And believe it or not the book was by Cram (no joke, and a Nobel Prize winner)</p>
<p>Ended my dreams of med school ...</p>
<p>NewMassDad--I am undoubtedly confabulating the memorization I did for biochem with the memorization I did for organic chem--since I took them both together--but there is indeed an enormous amount of vocabulary and memorization. Yes, you can take advantage of common roots--just as you can when learning Latin--but you still have to memorize those roots. But since I was a biochem major, I can assure you "I really understand the chemistry."</p>
<p>dmd77,</p>
<p>You may have been an unusual biochem major in really understanding chemistry, because most I knew were much bigger on the bio than the chem. And that was a big part of the problem. I can say I did not really begin to understand o-chem until I finished quantum mechanics and understood the electronic structures better and so forth. </p>
<p>Gee, this thread is making me proud of my daughter, who took o-chem last year, and not only did well, but led the curve on several of the exams.</p>
<p>UMDAD-Thanks for posting this question and thanks to all who have responded. The info here has given me a little more understanding of the complexity involved.</p>
<p>I, too, have a kid clawing his way through OChem and Bio this semester. He said he never imagined any class could be so hard and he is spending all his spare time in the library studying OChem. He has a very good memory and is hanging in there, but I can hear the stress in his voice when he talks about it. I can't decide if I should send him a link to this thread or info on law schools. :)</p>
<p>Part of the difficulty arises from the massive quantity of information you need to memorize. The other part of the difficulty is that for most students, it is the first time they need to deal with chemistry in such an abstract, spacial way. I have vivid memories of molecular model kits (which really helped me to think about spacial concepts BTW!)</p>
<p>Son who made it through 1st semester orgo with an A (and hard work) found 2nd semester orgo (that he had to drop due to illness) a whole new ball game. He said first semester you get by with memorization, but in 2nd semester one really had to understand the processes? right word? never took it myself.</p>