The Most Important Question To Ask When Learning a New Reaction
What Bonds Form, What Bonds Break? About a month or so ago I had a big revelation as an instructor. Something that I’d been taking
Read moreWhat Bonds Form, What Bonds Break? About a month or so ago I had a big revelation as an instructor. Something that I’d been taking
Read moreThe most important question when learning a new reaction is recognizing “What Bonds Form, What Bonds Break?” If that’s #1, then what’s the second most
Read moreHow Do The Electrons Move? “Electron Pushing” With The Three Types Of Curved Arrows When learning any new reaction, I think you always have to
Read moreUnderstanding The 7 Key Factors That Stabilize Negative Charge (And Ultimately, Basicity) Like I wrote about in a previous post, it’s good – but not
Read moreStabilization Of Positive Charge In Organic Chemistry: 7 Key Factors Just to clarify: make sure you’re familiar with how formal charge can mislead before you
Read moreNucleophiles and Electrophiles, Nucleophilicity and Electrophilicity All through the series on understanding where electrons are, and how they flow, we’ve been talking about how the
Read moreCurved Arrows: The Accounting System For Electron Movement If you think of electrons as the currency of chemistry, reactions are transactions of electrons between atoms.
Read moreCurved Arrows In Organic Chemistry: Always Change Two (And Only Two!) Charges Here’s a handy little trick for accounting for charges when you draw curved
Read moreUnderstanding The Differences Between Nucleophilicity vs Basicity Following up on Nucleophiles and Electrophiles, here’s a common question students have about nucleophilicity: 1. What’s the difference
Read moreI know I’ve said this before, but a whole lot of organic chemistry can be boiled down to “nucleophile attacks electrophile“. A nucleophile is a
Read more