Organic Chemistry is overlooked as a first year chemistry topic in most areas, but it can be a very valuable and fun experience for students. This is an activity that can be used to introduce students to functional groups.
Erica Jacobsen shares highlights from the April 2019 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education.
Erica Jacobsen shares highlights from the February 2017 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education that are of special interest to high school chemistry teachers.
For a recent unit on organic chemistry for my IB students, I tried something new. I gave them a handout with a list of organic compounds (by class/functional group) and a list of mechanisms and reaction types. Their task (in small groups), using either butcher paper or a large whiteboard, was to create a flow chart of reaction pathways.
“You sank my battleship!” Do you remember this line from a classic commercial featuring the board game Battleship? It sat in my family’s game closet when I was a kid, but it’s popping up again recently, with chemistry twists.
During our review since last week, resonance was labeled as one of the most tricky concepts (along with electron pushing in my opinion), despite lots of practice and instruction. My teaching sequence consists of defining and providing examples of conjugation (after learning about hybridization), delocalized electrons, and finally pushing electrons if conjugation exists. I remember from teaching at the college level that resonance was also a tricky topic for many undergraduates.
