Arrow-Pushing in Organic Chemistry Daniel E. Levy
Publisher: Wiley-Interscience
You are worried, you have heard that organic. The prof began by giving the class a diagnostic series of electron-pushing exercises--a straightforward breeze for me, but a lot of trouble for the biochemists. This English edition of a best-selling and award-winning German textbook Reaction Mechanisms: Organic Reactions · Stereochemistry · Modern Synthetic Methods is aimed at those who desire to learn organic chemistry through an approach that is facile to understand and easily committed to memory. I especially like the way the usual 2D representations of reactions are tied to the 3D animation: you click on 2D structures to see 3D structures and "electron pushing", and on arrows to animate the reaction. Using curved arrows, I kept track of the movement of electrons and gradually developed a strong appreciation for the value of this "arrow pushing" technique. Organic chemistry—the branch that deals with carbon-containing compounds—has intimidated many a student trying to master all of its mechanisms and electron-pushing details. This really drives home to the point that the static I wish this has been available when I took organic chemistry, which, somehow, wasn't made any easier by the fact that half the reactions hadn't been discovered yet. This is the backbone of learning how to arrow push and draw organic reaction mechanisms. Chemists need to express similar awe at the correspondence between their arrow pushing, molecular chairs and boats and the manifestation of these manipulations as the real solids, liquids and gases in their beakers. Blog post about organic chemistry and tutoring: Preparing to study Organic chemistry - Congratulations, you have made it through two semesters of general chemistry, next stop organic chemistry. The mathematician Hermann Weyl who . Robert Burns Woodward, widely considered to be the preeminent organic chemist of the century, was a craftsman practicing high art (Image: Wikipedia Commons). Yes, life sciences are important, but course in the Biochem Dept. I'm not saying that the Nobel prize should go to an organic chemist (though the click reaction should be on the shortlist just because of how widely its used these days) but I would definitely like to see something with less of a life sciences bent to it. Michael Harmata The systematic use of red “electron-pushing arrows” allows students to follow each transformation elementary step by elementary step.