How hard is Organic Chemistry really?

p-chem phd wrote:

It's a lot of memorization. I think it gets its reputation from all the pre meds that have to take it.

No you are not.

As a triple major in math, physics, and chem I would have to say that o chem is the hardest, considering the timing. Now if you were talking about something like a second year program, typically calc 3 and diff eq, classical and modern physics, and o chem 1 and 2 the math would be more difficult for most people, its just a little harder to wrap your head around. At that level the physics should be the easiest, you could do it mainly with a basic knowledge of algebra and the o chem is not that bad if you put the time into it.

bio major wrote:For the record, the test was on Sn1, Sn2, E1, E2, and reactions of alcohols and ethers.

That's high school chemistry. It can get much harder.

i am at a jr college taking g.e. i've finished one yr of calc and chem with a's, but i was stumped by physics this semester and had to drop. i never took physics in high school, i was a partyer and never carried books at all. i couldn't handle the words and translate them into new equations for vectors and kinematics at all. i think i'm smart in some things. i am really pissed that i can't do physics at all. i want to be able do 2 years of physics at least enough to become an engineer. i plan to go over the book again all xmas vacation and am going to try like hell. (thank god for piratebay.com). any tips on how to do word problems and how to transform my brain into a brain that can become an engineer ?

Start with the basics of physics. If you never did it in high school perhaps get a high school textbook, but try to understand how all the formulae are derived (if you got an a in calculus that shouldn't be too hard). Get really familiar with elementary mechanics (Newton's laws of motion, SHM and circular motion, equations of constant acceleration, kinetic and potential energy/ work etc). If you understand this very well then the harder stuff shouldn't be too bad.

When you get problems, write down everything that it tells you (speeds, positions, directions, distances) and anything that is implied or assumed (eg. gravity, friction). Set everything out clearly, then write down any formulae/ relationships between the quantities you have been given. If needs be, derive any expression to find what you need, then put the numbers in. If an algebraic approach doesn't work, try using calculus (and vice versa.) Remember that answers often come after a long period of thought, even if you don't seem to be making progress.

I had an class called "African American Film & Literature". We watched Shaft.

Alan

Not true. If you are memorizing the mechanisms, you are missing the point.

p-chem phd wrote:

It's a lot of memorization. I think it gets its reputation from all the pre meds that have to take it.

Not true. If you are memorizing the mechanisms, you are missing the point.

Exactly. That's why all the pre-med students think it's so hard, and why they fall apart when they come across a reaction they haven't seen before on an exam. There are really only a few basic concepts at work throughout undergraduate organic chemistry. All the rest is learning to recognize those concepts at work in different situations. Once you figure this out, ochem becomes a walk in the park.

I remember taking AP chem in high school. I got a B and thought I was smart enough. Boy was I wrong.

In college I did not need to take chemistry but one day my freshman year I glanced at my roommate's intro to Organic Chemistry book. Halfway through the first page I did not understand anything they were talking about. Not in the slightest. I thanked the lord I had chosen Business as a major.

I think my class was about 170 kids or so at the start (I went to Wisconsin La Crosse which is a pretty solid chemistry/biology school...or it must have been because I was better educated than all the kids I went to grad school with) and I was in about the top 5-10%. I know I wasn't way smarter than a lot of the other kids, but most people just had no idea how much work was necessary.

I tutored some chick after she failed the first exam (how you fail nomenclature and functional groups, i have no idea). I asked her about her study habits, and she basically had none. She only needed a few hours worth of tutoring, and someone to tell her she needed to read the text and do all the practice problems. After that she got A's and B's for all the rest of the exams.

Still not easy, but if you're putting in a good 20 hours per week for the class, I would think any scientifically intelligent person could at least get a C.

Bio as easy as your mom? maybe at your big state school or a CC.

Try it at an Stanford or an Ivy or something, then lets talk.

organic one was no sweat - i really struggled when i got to organic 2 though. its a LOT of synthesis, etc. it's like a house of cards - if you forget one thing, the whole problem won't work i had to take orgo 2 twice, and i hated every minute of it.

to top it all off, i ended up not going to med shcool even though i got in....now i work in a molecular bio lab and haven't used it one day here. i tihnk the only reason premeds are required to take orgo 2 is because of the sheer difficulty of the class, not the material itself.

NYHSCoach wrote:

Not true. If you are memorizing the mechanisms, you are missing the point.

p-chem phd wrote:

It's a lot of memorization. I think it gets its reputation from all the pre meds that have to take it.

Compared to physics or other areas of chemistry, it *is* a lot of memorization. Gee, what they hell do I call the benzene with the carbon groups the are two apart? para, ortho? Damn, I can't remember. (This is 20 years ago for me.) You have to memorize that crap.

You're right about the mechanisms, but that really isn't what I was talking about. Still that's memorization on some level. You have to have a bag of tricks to use for synthesis problems and that means remembering the stuff in the bag.

Now that I think about it, the mechanisms are to a great extent memorization. The dynamics aren't really just like those stick figures say. Those are representations, not the reaction itself. They're useful and help us reason about what's going on (and even make predictions), but I think organic chemists can lose sight of this. To get the problem right though, you have to reproduce the canonical "explanation." Don't get me wrong, canons are useful and a discipline needs one, but you can get yourself stuck if you confuse it for the real thing.

The memorization and pre-med comments were two separate comments really.

It *is* a lot of memorization. Maybe I underrated the rest of it because that was the easy part for me.

I also believe the horror stories came from a lot of the pre med students who had to take it. For chem majors, it was just another chem class. For the math/physics type of chemistry people like me, we just didn't like it.

Alright, so as a Chem major and current PhD student, yes, O-chem can be hard, it can seem like a lot of memorization. But, in my opinion, the progression once you have the basics makes sense, so it can be manageable if you put in the time.

On the other hand one of my most frustrating classes was BioChem. If you want just tons of non-nonsensical, dis-jointed memorization, it is trying to remember all of the steps of the Kreb's cycle and all of the other ones and then have a professor that asks ridiculous multiple choice questions with options a-h and the answers are a,b,c a,d and h etc.

The professor can make a huge difference, but in my mind it is manageable. Now as for hard classes- try P-chem II (quantum mechanics) with all of the math left for you to do, that sucks. I took it at the same time as Bio-chem and I liked the p-chem better.

Oh, and don't pay attention to the pre-med people they are point hungry and obsessed with grades.

I went to a large undergraduate institution with one of the highest percentage of graduates going on to graduate school.

Just cheat, I gave a buddy a bag of weed to take my final...

Me neither wrote:

Bio as easy as your mom? maybe at your big state school or a CC.

Try it at an Stanford or an Ivy or something, then lets talk.

Biology compared to organic chemistry is easy. Moreover, the general point of my post was that biology can be undertaken pretty easily once you have a good chemistry background. A large number of the most exciting biologists today were trained as organic chemists. See Carolyn Bertozzi @ Berkeley and Kevan Shokat @ UCSF for examples.

It would be pretty hard for me to go back to undergrad at an ivy league school and take biology courses. However, if I did, I'm pretty sure they would be easy. I'm getting my PhD in cancer biology at a place on par with the Ivy's, and most of my fellow graduate students went to Princeton, Stanford, or Cornell, etc and they don't seem to know much more than me.

Ivy League undergrad education is a bit of a waste of cash (in the sciences, imo). However, for graduate school or a post doc, they can't be beat.

Way old scho wrote:

Just cheat, I gave a buddy a bag of weed to take my final...

So, you're a friend of Marijuologist?

O-chem is the best subject ever!

My o-chem course was not a soft one, but many of my upper math courses were much harder (both advanced calc's, num. analysis,...).