Substituted Cyclohexanes – Axial vs Equatorial
Equatorial vs Axial Groups: Why The Equatorial Position Is Of Lower Energy Just to bring you up to speed, let’s quickly review the last post.
Read moreRanking The Bulkiness Of Substituents On Cyclohexanes: “A-Values”
“A-Values” For Substituted Cyclohexanes “A-Values” are a numerical way of rating the bulkiness of substituents on a cyclohexane ring. The “A-Value” represents the difference in
Read moreFischer Esterification – Carboxylic Acid to Ester Under Acidic Conditions
Carboxylic Acid to Ester Under Acidic Conditions (Fischer Esterification) The conversion of a carboxylic acid to an ester under acidic conditions is commonly known as
Read moreCommon Mistakes with Carbonyls: Carboxylic Acids… Are Acids!
Carboxylic acids… are acids. I know that seems obvious. But it’s a near certainty that students taking Org 2 for the first time will forget
Read moreGoodwill Notoriously Absent In Miramax, MOC Lawsuit
Special to MOC from Variety HOLLYWOOD, CA – Mirimax Entertainment announced today that they are suing educational organic chemistry website Master Organic Chemistry for an
Read moreCyclohexane Chair Conformation Stability: Which One Is Lower Energy?
Finding The Most Stable Conformation Of A Cyclohexane Chair You’re given a structure with two or more substituents on a cyclohexane ring, and you’re asked
Read moreFused Rings – Cis-Decalin and Trans-Decalin
Why Is trans-Decalin More Stable Than cis-Decalin? At the beginning of this series I said that the fact that carbon can form rings leads to
Read moreHow To Apply Memory Techniques In Learning Organic Chemistry
In the last post we talked about how having a great memory is no guarantee of doing well on many types of organic chemistry exams.
Read moreHow Much Does Having A Great Memory Matter?
I recently heard from a reader, Hussain, who told me that he’d been working on memory techniques that allowed him to memorize a deck of
Read moreOxidation and Reduction in Organic Chemistry
Iron smelting! Photo credit: http://sclowcountryoutdoors.blogspot.com/2011/02/iron-smelting-at-acba.html In the beginning, the term actually made sense. When the alchemists and medieval metallurgists started doing experiments to quantify exactly how
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