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.