<p>You memorized for Ochem and did fine? That's a death sentence at most schools. Anyway, pchem is supposed to be easier for physics majors because most have taken quantum mechanics before taking pchem (which is mainly quantum).</p>
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You memorized for Ochem and did fine? That's a death sentence at most schools.
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QFT.</p>
<p>I would rather have jumped off a bridge than tried to get through my Orgo class by using memorization. I would have been eaten alive had I just memorized. In fact, I think that's why about a quarter of my class didn't return for Orgo II after Orgo I.</p>
<p>I did well in Orgo I mostly through memorization, but people tell me that being able to visualize and manipulate 3D objects in your head really helps (and in fact it does because reactions and synthesis become soooo much easier).</p>
<p>I memorized my way through orgo 1. Wasn't really that hard, there were only like 20 mechanisms. Memorizing through orgo 2 would've been tough, though.</p>
<p>^That's all the mechanisms you had to know for Orgo 1?????</p>
<p>Yep. There were about 300 or so for orgo 2. Have fun memorizing that.</p>
<p>"Isn't Pchem one of the hardest classes an undergrad can take? That's what I heard and the general concensus was."</p>
<p>There was a sophomore level math class that I took as a freshmen which covered topics that generally aren't covered until around 2nd year of grad school. Trust me, things can get far far worse than pchem.</p>
<p>Memorization in Ochem really isn't that bad as long as you're willing to put it together with a LITTLE understanding. Even though there are tons of mechanisms in any decent ochem class, most of them can be grouped into more general types of reactions, with similar nucleophile/electrophile patterns. So you memorize one of the mechanisms, then apply it to the ones that are most similar- it really turns out that there's not that much.</p>
<p>Got an A in orgo I. That was the class that I worked the hardest in all year by far. And I still don't feel I have the strongest understanding, we just got nice curves on the tests and final that I was at the front of. I guess some of the mechanisms (about 30 or so as prev. mentioned) just clicked as in which ones were Markinokov, which ones were anti, etc.</p>
<p>Russel- I had about 100 mechanism for Orgo 1 so that's why I'm surprised that you only 20.</p>
<p>I did not memorize as much in orgo as I thought I would. Granted, it was an easier version that (bio)chemistry majors had to take. I just memorized a few basic reactions that categorizes all the reactions I've learned, and some special ones that didn't fall into any category. </p>
<p>My prof was telling me that all of organic chemistry can be summarized into 5 (sometimes 6) reactions, and that's the "smart" way to learn orgo. It was something about the functional group approach vs the mechanistic approach. Memorizing 300 reactions is the functional group approach, but you can't learn via the mechanistic approach until you learn it through the functional group approach, otherwise it won't make sense.</p>
<p>Not sure how things changes in orgo 2, but I aimed to understand the mechanism behind a reaction (why), rather than memorizing a bunch of reactions (how).</p>
<p>Russel- I had about 100 mechanism for Orgo 1 so that's why I'm surprised that you only 20.</p>
<p>Can you name some of them? That sounds bizarre. I'd like to know some of the 80 that you covered in orgo 1 that we didn't, especially since I was in an accelerated OChem 1 course. When I say mechanism -</p>
<p>the friedel crafts reaction is one mechanism
the aldol condensation is one mechanism
oxymercuration is one mechanism
etc.</p>
<p>I'm talking about general reactions constituting 1 mechanism. I don't think that we could've fit 100 mechanisms into our lectures with all of the other crap that we did in the course. You're telling me that you guys learned all of the theory behind elimination/substitution reactions, stereochemistry, functional groups, spectroscopy, nomenclature, and everything else and still managed to fit in 3 mechanisms per lecture?</p>
<p>I looked at lecture notes from another University and it looks like they covered pretty much the same material as we did. But yeah, tell me some of those mechanisms... I'm genuinely curious. I'll list the 20 that we covered in Ochem 1.</p>
<p>Our Orgo1 only had a couple of mechanisms...Sn1, Sn2, E1, E2, and a few alcohol, alkene, alkyne, and random radical reactions. One has to know how to apply general trends to do well (i.e. nucleophilicity, energy levels, orbitals, kinetics, etc).</p>
<p>Russell- if you want to know check UofToronto website for the site.</p>