Winter - Organic Chemistry I For Dummies

Organic Chemistry I For Dummies, 2nd Edition

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013954080

ISBN 978-1-118-82807-6 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-82796-3 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-82813-7 (ebk)

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Chapter 1

In This Chapter

Coping with pre-organic anxiety

Defining organic chemistry

Breaking down the mysteries of carbon

Seeing what organic chemists do

Organic chemistry is a tyrant youve heard about a lot. Youve heard your acquaintances whisper about it in secret. Its mean, they say; its brutish and impossibly difficult; its unpleasant to be around (and smells sort of funny). This is the chapter where I introduce you to organic chemistry, and where, I hope, you decide to forget about the negative comments youve heard about the subject.

In this chapter, I show you that the nasty rumors about organic chemistry are (mostly) untrue. I also talk about what organic chemistry is, and why you should spend precious hours of your life studying it. I show you that discovering organic chemistry really is a worthwhile and enjoyable expedition. And the journey is not all uphill, either.

Although organic is a very important and valuable subject, and for some its even a highly enjoyable subject, I realize that organic chemistry is intimidating, especially when you first approach it. Perhaps youve already had what many old-timers refer to simply as The Experience, the one where you picked up the textbook for the first time. This is the time when you heaved the book off the shelf in the bookstore. When you strained your back trying to hold it aloft. When you felt The Dread creep down your spine as you scanned through the books seemingly infinite number of pages and feared that, not only would you have to read all of it, but that reading it wouldnt be exactly like breezing through a Hardy Boys adventure or a Nancy Drew mystery.

No doubt, the material appeared strange. Opening to a page halfway through the book you saw bizarre chemical structures littering the page, curved arrows swooshing here and there like flocks of starlings, and data tables bulging with an inordinate number of values values that you suspect you might be required to memorize. I admit that organic chemistry is a little frightening.

I think most students feel this way before they take this class, and probably even your professor did, as did her professor before her. So youre not alone. But you can take comfort in knowing that organic chemistry is not as hard as it looks. Those who put in the required amount of work which, admittedly, is a lot and dont fall behind, almost always do well. More than almost any other subject, organic chemistry rewards the hard workers (like you), and relentlessly punishes the slothful (the others in your class). I think understanding organic chemistry is not so much hard as it is hard work.

I hope all this talk about how intimidating the course is hasnt put a damper on your enthusiasm, because the subject of organic chemistry really is a doozy. To learn about organic chemistry is to learn about life itself, because living organisms are composed of organic molecules and use organic molecules to function. Swarms of organic molecules are at work in your body fueling your brain, helping your neurons fire, and getting the muscles in your mouth to clench open and shut and thats just a small sampling of the organic molecules needed in order for you to complain about your schools chemistry requirements.

Humans, in fact, are composed almost entirely of organic molecules (all the soft parts anyway), from our muscles, hair, and organs, to the fats that cushion our bellies and keep us toasty warm during sweltering summer nights (some people are more richly blessed in this regard than others). Organic molecules can also range in size from the very tiny, like the carbon dioxide you exhale that consists of only three atoms, to the staggeringly large, like DNA, which acts as your molecular instruction manual and is made up of millions of atoms.