Does the subject of Organic Chemistry need to be fixed? I mean

>>8590236
to be honest, historically organic chemistry was done at first, and explained later
so obviously, it's like a mish-mash of everything, and it relies more on experience rather than exact knowledge of subject.

physical organic, and computational chemistry are more solid at this regard, but I personally find them less intuitive

The reason that chemistry is remotely useful to anybody is trend: if all examples in chemistry were unique situations with no clear-cut reactivity patterns, it would be a useless exercise except for what you start with and what you end with. The "random rules" describe how >90% of all relevant examples will react. If you think that all of the examples have a unique solution, you clearly do not understand the trend behind it. The question you should ask yourself (and how these things are explicated in textbooks) is "why" a general rule is general.

>>8590236
>random rules
its just acid base chemistry you fucking brainlet

>>8590236
Organic chemistry is understood very well but often has many exceptions to generalized umbrella rules. It can be difficult to learn when you have a teacher that is teaching by memorization rather than understanding. There's no real math involved beyond simple math or basic algebra. Like another anon said it's better understood in practice and experience than book knowledge

>>8590575
So yes and no: experience is helpful when you're trying to weigh how much individual contributions matter to overall reactivity. e.g., we're taught that steric clash slows reactions down, but at what point does crowding completely kill a reaction?

Literally everything you run into in a sophomore undergraduate orgo course can be explained by trend, and in this regard there is *zero* need for experience/practice. Take electrophilic alkene functionalization: you can memorize that HBr gives you the markovnikov product and draw a mechanism, and do a separate mechanism for acid-catalyzed etherification of alkenes. The better way to learn it is to walk through both mechanisms and say "Well holy fucking shit! If you protonate a double bond with a strong acid, the charge always sits on the more substituted center and that's where the nucleophile adds!". Then if you ever run across a similar problem with something slightly different, you can then say "well this is where the charge will sit and this is my nucleophile, so this is probably how it works"

It weeds out pre med students out of my fucking biology program so it's fine by me

>>8590680
How many hours until this is no longer gibberish to me?

>>8590680
well said, I just want to add something.
When I started OC lectures I basically just accepted the "general rules" at first and with time and more lectures and information I started to understand why and how a trend is set. It is pretty much connecting and comparing every aspect and factor by weighting their importance for each case. This may seem a bit confusing in the beginning, but these trends and rules are your tools to work with and not every tool is equally effective for different types of tasks so you have to choose which one is the best/most important.

>>8590894
>doing a biology program without doing pre-Med
Have fun making literally shit money as a lab monkey

>>8590933
I realized this way too late. A biology degree is basically useless. Without a solid core in chemistry, you can't do anything. Serves me right for choosing a bitch major.

>>8590933
I'm going for a PhD in virology with plans to work for the US Army or CDC, so I think I'll be better off than most people with science degrees

>>8590910
Memorize a handful of related mechanisms cold; once you finish, start looking for parallels between them. Where the electrons start, where the elections "want" to go, that kind of thing. Electrophilic substitution of alkenes is a great one to start with. This process gets easier and easier for each new class of reactions, and soon thinking about mechanisms that way will become second nature.

>>8590931
Worthy addition. It does take some time, and the exceptions help to frame the rules.

>>8590944
What chemistry you actually need for biology beside general and organic?

>>8591074
Just general chem and basic biochem. Organic is not even needed.

>>8591081
Organic is helpful if you actually want a rudimentary understanding of what's happening.

>>8590680

Even though it's probably, you never have an answer with absolute certainty nor an approximation that you can safely say hell yeah. It's all based off intuiton is which is what I disliked about orgo.

I will admit I probably disliked it because I was studying maybe 2 hours a week for it due to my other classes.

>>8592140
I think there are plenty of reactions where you can safely say "hell yeah".

Take amide couplings: peptides can be difficult to purify and can sometimes racemize under traditional coupling conditions, so there's been a lot of time invested into developing robust reagents so that these reactions can be run quickly with stereoretention. I've never had one of these reactions fail.

Same with certain classes of cross-coupling reactions. Because the reaction is so important for pharmaceuticals [some absurd portion -- >40% -- of drugs include a cross coupling in their synthesis] a lot of time has been invested in catalyst design and improvement. With some of the fancier systems, you can do most sp2-sp2 Suzuki reactions of non-heteroarenes. Even heteroarenes are getting easier by the year.

It's the reactions that everyone *thinks* should be robust that tend to be a bit more finicky.

>>8592333
dumb stamp collector

>>8593032
Let me know when you make a meaningful contribution to both science and the well-being of mankind, ace.

>>8593032
Why are you hating on
>>8593108
like a little bitch?

Weighing in:

I think organic chemistry is fine if it's taught from the mechanistic point of view using primarily electronegativity. Once you run enough problems using a mechanistic style, you begin to see a very clear trend as to why certain molecules and atoms behave they way they do, in a variety of situation. And even the "exceptions" to the general rule can be explained using mechanisms and electron behavior.

What it turns into, at least for me, is a kind of applied logic class. A reaction mechanism on an exam begins to look like a statement, and you must logically use your knowledge of trends to explain behavior. It's very cool.

>>8593135
As >>8593144 points out
its all just memorising electron withdrawing groups and no intellectual demand lmao

>>8593227

Fuck off, troll. You either haven't taken it or are just trying to rile people

>>8593227
...yeah, in an intro class to the subject. That's like saying that physics is a joke because "all it is is blocks sliding down hills and cars stopping :)"

>>8593457
I'm trying to rile people. Pericyclic reactions are cool

page 10 bump

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>it takes 3 years to teach a concept as simple as sterics vs electronics

>>8596233
When you start dealing with real substrates, what matters more can be case-by-case dependent.

>>8590236
Welcome to our science, you learn nothing you are NOT allowed to try learn, you are to memorize, use and create more on top of the memorized, using the memorized info.
By no means you are allowed to use a different working approach which explains how things works, because if you do so youll create problems and science doesnt want to admit that most of its assumptions were wrong(in its approach) for the last 500-600years since the very beginning.

This universe is an electric and geometric universe.

the real question is why would you do organic chem? its quite possibly the easiest subject and basically on par with biology and geology

>>8596759
>This universe is an electric and geometric universe.

Also unlike what you'll learn, this universe is an electric(energy) and geometric universe, but for the safety of 'science' you are to laugh at the idea of it. *

>>8596759
wtf are you talking about?

>>8596766
also wtf are you talking about? still many unsolved problems in organic synthesis that if solved could dramatically improve the quality of life of billions

>>8596759
Www lad, you're dumb.

>>8596771
what i mean is that organic chemistry has nothing going for it, being a subset of a subset of a subset. i get why people study it as they often excel at it (as did i) in high school but its not a field that really needs studying and needs barely any building blocks)

>>8590931
>It is pretty much connecting and comparing every aspect and factor by weighting their importance for each case.

This.

>>8596781
Can you even name the biggest problems facing organic synthesis today and if it doesn't require study can you put forward solutions?

>>8596792
you rush to conclusions, chemist. i never said it was a complete subset. every issue seems to be a case by case, most likely issues are related to buckyball type compounds or organic polymers.

the theoretical side comes second in organic chemistry which is why i cant appreciate it, however like taxmen it is a necessity of society that people are allocated to the field of organic chemistry

>>8591081
How can you understand biochemistry without learning some organic chemistry?

>>8596803
>the theoretical side comes second in organic synthesis
Dan Singleton is revising textbook mechanisms that have been incorrect for a century using highly theoretical work. Moreover, certain phenomena in organic systems can only be examined (for now) by theoretical methods, e.g. dispersion. Both of these things will impact how we design reaction mechanisms and impact synthetic thinking: to presume otherwise is a tremendous joke.

>every issue seems to be a case by case
Welcome to a fucking big boy science: we understand so much of the rudimentary that we can begin to examine the exceptions in great detail to understand *why* they are exceptions. You literally have no idea what you're talking about and no basis to condemn organic chemistry as "the easiest subject" with "nothing going for it" as a consequence. Go back to jerking off over whatever popsci astrophysicist is your current waifu if you're not going to be a serious scientist.