Welcome to second-semester organic!
Excited? Apprehensive? A bit nervous? Yes, I am. How are you?
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Second semester organic chemistry builds on what you learned last semester.
In first-semester organic you learned about some of the basic building blocks of
organic compounds -- alkanes, alkenes, alkyl halides, alcohols, and ethers.
We also looked at spectroscopy, and we spent a lot of time talking about
mechanisms, specifically substitution and elimination reactions.
Although you aren't expected to remember everything
you learned (or tried to learn) in that course, there will be lots of applications
of that material here. It wouldn't hurt to sit down and review some of that material again.
If you had major problems in Chemistry 247, please talk with me
so that we can make a plan for success in this course.
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Homework will not be collected in this course.
Suggested problems from the book and other related problems will be assigned,
and my solutions to these will be posted on the course Moodle site.
It's possible that I will offer some opportunities for extra credit, but I can't guarantee that. It all depends upon
how the class overall is doing.
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Throughout the semester there will be workshops on synthesis prior to each exam.
These will be group-based activities that we will do -- or at least start --
in class. They will be challenging exercises that will help you put the pieces of the puzzle together yourself
and help you study for the exam.
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What I don't expect
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What I do expect
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You'll remember everything you learned last semester.
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You'll learn everything on your own reading the book without my help.
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You're an artistic genious.
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You'll come prepared each day having at least looked over the material
in the chapter, ready to ask a question.
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You'll work through the problem sets even though they will not be collected.
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When working with your assigned group you will participate fully.
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Grading
The proportions of the total grade to be
assigned to respective aspects of the course
are given in the table on the right. The total number
of points for the semester will be 700. I reserve the right to
change this point distribution during the semester if necessary.
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| 71% | Five Midterm Exams (100 points each; 500 points total) |
| 4% | "How Can I Help You?" cards (25 points) |
| 4% | Occasional Assignments (25 points) |
| 7% | Group Drug Design Project (50 points) |
| 14% | Final Examination (100 points) |
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Course content
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During the first half of this course we will expand that list of compounds to ones containing C=O groups.
You will see how incredibly important these functional groups are in any application of organic chemistry,
whether that is in the area of medicinal chemistry, biochemistry, environmental chemistry,
material science, or any related field.
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During the third quarter of this course we will focus on aromatic compounds (benzene and its derivatives).
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After that, we will study compounds of
biological significance. This isn't a biochemistry course; instead we will focus on
the organic building blocks of biological systems. What they are; how they work; why they react the way they do.
The focus will be on the two basic tenets of biochemistry: structure and function -- with a sense of
the driving forces included (as measured by enthalpy, entropy, and Gibbs energy).
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The last weeks of the course will be devoted to group projects in the area of medicinal chemsitry (drug design).
More about that later.
My Job
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As I hope you discovered last semester, the subjects dealt with in organic chemistry are very strongly connected
logically and should make sense. If they don't, I'm not doing my job. I want to know about it.
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I'll help you all I can. Take
advantage of the fact that you are at St. Olaf! My door is (almost) always open. Stop by. Introduce yourself.
I only ask that you not call me by phone at home; I'm usually online in the evening -- so email is better, and my wife has to get up at 5:30 in the morning to get to school.
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