CHEM 231: Introduction to Organic Chemistry
CHEM 231 is an introduction to organic chemistry. As with any discipline, chemistry has its own language, with symbols and drawings that aim to represent molecules and chemical behaviours. We will start the course with introducing the representational tools that organic chemists use to communicate information, i.e., the language of organic chemistry (Module 1 in your lecture book). Then, we will examine the types of bonds and geometries present in organic molecules (Module 2) and apply those to chemical behavior, specifically acidity and basicity (Module 3). Chemists synthesize and discover new molecules every day and they need tools to identify these new structures. The tools that are most used when determining the structure of an unknown organic compound will be described in Module 4 (this module will involve a lot of puzzle solving). Module 5 will have us look at the 3D shape of organic molecules and some properties of cyclic structures. While Modules 1-5 introduce foundational knowledge for building an understanding of chemical reactions, Module 6 is where we’ll study chemical reactions. The two chemical reactions that we’ll deconstruct in CHEM 231 are nucleophilic substitution and elimination. Module 6 is the most comprehensive module - it brings together knowledge from all the other modules and this is where the intrinsically cumulative nature of organic chemistry will become undeniable.