Hello students! So many of you are likely in the home stretch of Organic Chemistry class and the final exam is rapidly approaching.

Here are three importnat items to consider when studying for the final exam:

1) Find out exactly what is on the exam

This sounds simple, but we cannot stress enough the importance of finding out exactly what you are expcted to know on your final. Most of the time the final exam is cumulative, however sometimes it is not. In addition, sometimes the exam focuses on the later part of the semseter- possibly on information that was not tested on prior exams for the course.

2) Know every reaction backwards and forwards

Final exams love to ask you questions that require you to draw upon a vast background of knowledge. Therefore, you must know each organic chemistry reaction backwards and forwards. Consider this:

Organic chemistry reactions are presented in the following basic framework:

A+B→C

Or

Reactant A + Reactant B → Product

In order to truly learn organic chemistry you must know not just how to determine the product from the two reactants (determine C if given A and B), you must know how to determine A if given B and C and to determine B if given A and C.

This leads to the following blanks:

A+B→?

?+B→C

A+?→C

Traditional flashcards in organic chemistry only present A + B → ?

Most students will only try to memorize what product you will get when adding two items together. While this is certainly important, that’s only 1/3 of the subject material! That means that you are only 1/3 prepared for your examination. Professors are aware that students typically fall into this trap and will try to trick students on exam day by eliciting knowledge they don’t have because they only learned each reaction in this simplified format.

With StudyOrgo.com’s Quiz Mode (members only) you can now master each entire reaction no matter what information is supplied to you. This is because you can choose what part of the reaction you would like to be tested on. You can even have this change randomly throughout the quiz.

3) See the big picture

We recommend beginning by going through each chapter and learning the reactions and concepts individually. However, the most crucial step to mastering organic chemistry is being able to synthesize the information and make connections between the various reactions.  Begin by taking a sheet of paper and drawing out all of the reactions. Then draw arrows to see how they interrelate. We already took care of this for you– check out the StudyOrgo.com Reaction Roadmap. Members have access to it here: http://www.studyorgo.com/roadmap.php 

If you are not yet a member, you can sign up by visiting: https://www.studyorgo.com/signup.php

Happy Studying!

Don’t loose sleep trying to understand Ozonolysis. Here is the StudyOrgo.com way of simplifying Ozonolysis:

• Ozonolysis Overall Big Picture:
  • Reduction: Alkene →  Ketones and/or Aldehydes
  • Oxidation: Alkene → Ketones and/or Carboxylic acids

• Depicted here is an ozonolysis reduction reaction:

• A trick to figuring out the products of the Ozonolysis Reduction reactions is to simply squeeze two oxygens at the center of the starting alkene and that separates out your two products. We drew out the products facing each other to more easily visualize this.

• Depicted here is an ozonolysis oxidation reaction:

• • A trick to figuring out the products of the Ozonolysis Oxidation reactions is similar to the trick of Ozonolysis Reduction described above. Simply squeeze two oxygens at the center of the starting alkene and that separates out your two products. However, you must also add an oxygen before the hydrogen in any resulting aldehyde to make it a carboxylic acid. We drew out the products facing each other to more easily visualize this.

• Key Tip: In general, ozonolysis reactions have two stages of adding reactants. The first is to add ozone (O₃). The second determines whether the reaction will proceed as reduction or oxidation. A reactant such as (CH₃)₂S will promote reduction, while a reactant such as H₂O₂ orwarm, concentrated KMnO₄ will promote oxidation.

• Beware! Ozonolysis problems can be challenging at times, and as such professors will test these problems in a variety of different ways. One classic way of testing ozonolysis is to provide the two products and ask the student to determine which starting alkene underwent ozonolysis to produce the given products. This is why the StudyOrgo.com unique reaction flashcard method is so valuable. We recommend that in addition to learning the reaction by revealing the first and second windows then determining the last window, that students reveal the middle and last windows and try to determine the first.

• This can be practiced by creating custom quizes in the unique StudyOrgo.com Quiz Mode. Learn more about it and Sign-Up today!

Question from one of our students: Is there any way to practice the mechanisms of the various organic reactions on this program?

Answer from one of our StudyOrgo.com Experts: Thank you for your inquiry. Yes, our program highlights the key points about mechanisms in the reaction description sections of the flashcards. These are written under the heading of “Mechanism Hint.” Additionally, the full mechanisms for the reactions of SN1, SN2, E1, E2 can be found in the dedicated StudyChart: “SN1 SN2 E1 E2 Comparison Chart.” We do not write out the entire mechanism for each reaction because this information can be easily obtained in any standard organic chemistry textbook. Our materials present key tips, tricks and hints that textbooks and professors don’t tell you but can be very valuable for exams. Additionally, mechanisms are typically a small portion of any classroom exam and it would typically inefficient to try to memorize every single mechanism. Rather, you may want to learn the ones that your professor highlights. Our materials will help you understand the reactions and other topics that will be tested in a very thorough manner. Take time to learn each reaction in Study Mode, then practice what you learned by creating custom quizzes in our Quiz Mode. If you every have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at any time.

This question from one of our Twitter followers:

Answer from one of our StudyOrgo.com Experts:

That is a great question. Cyclopentyne is an extremely unstable molecule. Cyclopentyne has two main inherently unstable properties:

1. it is a small membered ring structure
2. is has a triple bond in the molecule

Let me explain each of these:

#1- it is a small membered ring structure
The smaller the carbon ring the more unstable it is. The reason for this is that the molecule cannot freely rotate about each bond. This is referred to as ring strain. The smallest carbon membered ring is cyclopropane which only has three carbons. This molecule has the highest ring strain of all the carbon rings. A five membered ring such as cyclopentyne is not too far from that.

#2- it has a triple bond in the molecule
The triple bond within the molecule is an example of sp hybridiation. You may recall that this geometry assumes a bond angle of 180 degrees. However when you force a triple bond into a ringed structure such as cyclopentyne, you are forcing the hybridization to assume a bond angle less than its preferred orientation of 180 degrees where the normal bond angle in such a structure is 108 degrees. That’s certainly much less than 180 degrees and that makes that carbon to carbon bond very unhappy!!

So, if the issue of ring strain wasn’t enough, now add on top of that an sp hybridized carbon to carbon interaction of the triple bond forced into a much smaller bong angle than it is accustomed to and you are left with a very unstable molecule. For these reasons no one has ever been able to make cyclopentyne as a stable molecule.