Organic Chemistry I For Dummies

Arthur Winter

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781119296577
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Naturwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Organische Chemie

Organic Chemistry I For Dummies, 2nd Edition (9781119293378) was previously published as Organic Chemistry I For Dummies, 2nd Edition (9781118828076). While this version features a new Dummies cover and design, the content is the same as the prior release and should not be considered a new or updated product.

The easy way to take the confusion out of organic chemistry

Organic chemistry has a long-standing reputation as a difficult course. Organic Chemistry I For Dummies takes a simple approach to the topic, allowing you to grasp concepts at your own pace.

This fun, easy-to-understand guide explains the basic principles of organic chemistry in simple terms, providing insight into the language of organic chemists, the major classes of compounds, and top trouble spots. You'll also get the nuts and bolts of tackling organic chemistry problems, from knowing where to start to spotting sneaky tricks that professors like to incorporate.

• Refreshed example equations
• New explanations and practical examples that reflect today's teaching methods
• Fully worked-out organic chemistry problems

Baffled by benzines? Confused by carboxylic acids? Here's the help you need—in plain English!

Part 1

Getting Started with Organic Chemistry

IN THIS PART …

Get an introduction to organic chemistry.

Speak organic chemistry using Lewis structures.

See acids and bases and functional groups.

Look at organic molecules in three dimensions.

Chapter 1

The Wonderful World of Organic Chemistry

IN THIS CHAPTER

Coping with pre-organic anxiety

Defining organic chemistry

Breaking down the mysteries of carbon

Seeing what organic chemists do

Organic chemistry is a tyrant you’ve heard about a lot. You’ve heard your acquaintances whisper about it in secret. It’s mean, they say; it’s brutish and impossibly difficult; it’s unpleasant to be around (and smells sort of funny). This is the chapter where I introduce you to organic chemistry, and where, I hope, you decide to forget about the negative comments you’ve heard about the subject.

In this chapter, I show you that the nasty rumors about organic chemistry are (mostly) untrue. I also talk about what organic chemistry is, and why you should spend precious hours of your life studying it. I show you that discovering organic chemistry really is a worthwhile and enjoyable expedition. And the journey is not all uphill, either.

Shaking Hands with Organic Chemistry

Although organic is a very important and valuable subject, and for some it’s even a highly enjoyable subject, I realize that organic chemistry is intimidating, especially when you first approach it. Perhaps you’ve already had what many old-timers refer to simply as The Experience, the one where you picked up the textbook for the first time. This is the time when you heaved the book off the shelf in the bookstore. When you strained your back trying to hold it aloft. When you felt The Dread creep down your spine as you scanned through the book’s seemingly infinite number of pages and feared that, not only would you have to read all of it, but that reading it wouldn’t be exactly like breezing through a Hardy Boys adventure or a Nancy Drew mystery.

No doubt, the material appeared strange. Opening to a page halfway through the book you saw bizarre chemical structures littering the page, curved arrows swooshing here and there like flocks of starlings, and data tables bulging with an inordinate number of values — values that you suspect you might be required to memorize. I admit that organic chemistry is a little frightening.

THE SOAP OPERA OF ORGANIC MOLECULES

Organic molecules govern our life processes like metabolism, genetic coding, and energy storage. In nature, organic molecules also play out a crazy soap opera, acting as the medium for many twists and turns, deceptions, betrayals, strategic alliances, romances, and even warfare.

Take plants, for example. They seem so defenseless. When a predator comes to lunch on a plant’s leaves, the plant can’t just pack up its bags and take off. It’s stuck where it is, so there’s nothing it can do, right? But although plants may seem defenseless, they’re not. Many plants produce antifeedants, nasty organic compounds that are unpleasant tasting or even toxic to those who would dare eat them. (As a kid, I always knew Brussels sprouts contained something like this.) Predators that have feasted on a plant rich in these unpleasant compounds make sure to refrain from eating them in the future.

To produce antifeedants to discourage being eaten is bad enough, but sometimes plants have defenses that seem evil. Certain species of plants, for example, can detect when a caterpillar has decided to munch on its leaves (by detecting organic molecules present in the caterpillar’s spit!). When the plant detects that a caterpillar has decided to make supper on its leaves, the plant emits volatile organic molecules into the air, chemicals designed to attract wasps. When the wasps buzz by to check out what’s up, they see the caterpillars eating the plant and killing it. The wasps couldn’t care less about the misfortunes of the plant, but the female wasps do need a comfortable spot to hatch their eggs. And what’s a snugger nursery than the innards of a fat, juicy caterpillar?

When a wasp spots a caterpillar, it swoops down, makes a crash landing on the caterpillar’s back, stings the caterpillar into paralysis, and lays its eggs inside of it! When the wasp larvae hatch shortly thereafter, they make the caterpillar their first meal, munching on it contentedly from the inside out. The wasp has now reproduced and has had its little offspring fed, and the plant is rid of its pest — a strange alliance between wasp and plant, all thanks to communication by organic molecules. And that’s just one episode in this never-ending soap opera, produced, funded, and sponsored by organic molecules.

I think most students feel this way before they take this class, and probably even your professor did, as did her professor before her. So you’re not alone. But you can take comfort in knowing that organic chemistry is not as hard as it looks. Those who put in the required amount of work — which, admittedly, is a lot — and don’t fall behind, almost always do well. More than almost any other subject, organic chemistry rewards the hard workers (like you), and relentlessly punishes the slothful (the others in your class). I think understanding organic chemistry is not so much hard as it is hard work.

I hope all this talk about how intimidating the course is hasn’t put a damper on your enthusiasm, because the subject of organic chemistry really is a doozy. To learn about organic chemistry is to learn about life itself, because living organisms are composed of organic molecules and use organic molecules to function. Swarms of organic molecules are at work in your body — fueling your brain, helping your neurons fire, and getting the muscles in your mouth to clench open and shut — and that’s just a small sampling of the organic molecules needed in order for you to complain about your school’s chemistry requirements.

Humans, in fact, are composed almost entirely of organic molecules (all the soft parts anyway), from our muscles, hair, and organs, to the fats that cushion our bellies and keep us toasty warm during sweltering summer nights (some people are more richly blessed in this regard than others). Organic molecules can also range in size from the very tiny, like the carbon dioxide you exhale that consists of only three atoms, to the staggeringly large, like DNA, which acts as your molecular instruction manual and is made up of millions of atoms.

What Are Organic Molecules, Exactly?

But what ties all of these molecules together? What exactly makes a molecule organic? The answer lies in a single, precious atom: carbon. All organic molecules contain carbon, and to study organic chemistry is to study molecules made of carbon and to see what kinds of reactions they undergo and how they’re put together. When these principles are known, that knowledge can be put to good use, to make better drugs, stronger plastics, better mat...