Chem 242 @ Dickinson

Continuing with Acid Derivatives

We kept going with acid derivative chemistry today, with the major focus on acid halides. We looked at reactions to convert them to esters, amides, acids (hydrolysis) and alcohols. The major point was that all of these reactions are exactly the same thing! That is the big secret of organic chemistry; once you figure that part out all the rest comes more easily.

At the end I had everyone work on a Fischer esterification reaction and pointed out that for the next exam I would expect that question to take about 5 minutes.

This morning I sent out an e-mail with the assignments for the modeling exercise and a link to the structures. I cut back on the number of possibilities, ultimately only assigning one of just three molecules, all of which require only 8 - 10 minutes of processing time.

posted by DCChem @ 10:02 AM