An Impressive Organic Chem Class in College

An Impressive Organic Chem Class in College

In the process of studying organic chemistry, there were some extremely tough opinions about the chemical reaction mechanism. For sophomores, these concepts would be hard to be understood and be applied in the prediction of organic products. Therefore, our organic chemistry professor adopt a special activity to teach us to understand these difficult concepts rather than teach these knowledge according to our textbook.

At that class, he brought a lot of molecule models. And then, he divided us into five groups and each groups could get some atoms models(these are some small balls with some holes in different colors) and some short bars(in general, these bars are used as the bonds that can connect these single atoms). He showed us some simple reactions and asked us describing these reactions by using these tools. After that, he told us the steps which we tried to explain these simple reactions are the process of reacting, in other words, we had learned these hard concepts by playing these balls as well as bars. However, that was not the ending of that activity. Then, he gave us some difficult reactions that we could not explain by these props. After making sure that we could nor figure it out, he showed us some dynamic pictures to describe the process of these reactions. It was no doubt to believe that we could understand them immediately, because it showed them directly even though these reactions were abstract.

From that class, we could never forgot these hard concepts, and from that we also knew some skills about how to use them in some practical problems. At present, owing to the useful methods to teach us, chemical reaction mechanism is the easiest part of organic chemistry for us.  

the structure of some organic molecules

Organic compound. Retrieved November 2, 2014, from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/431954/organic-compound