Organic Chem self-study?

[bandgeek0295]

I am a rising junior in high school. I aced Honors Chem last year, and I'm taking AP chem this year. Would it be possible for me to do some organic chemistry self-study? I would love to, but I'm not sure if a year of high school chemistry is good enough of a foundation for OC.

 

Thanks,

Joe

[A Tripolation]

Disclaimer: I'm not an chemistry expert, nor am I particularly brilliant in that field.

 

You usually take Organic Chem after two semesters (one if you have the AP credit from high school) of university-level chemistry. In these two semesters, you develop and refine a LOT of chem techniques that will be used in Organic. Not to mention a lot of lab skills. To succeed in organic, you must get in the lab. All book and theory will cheat yourself out of some very useful hands-on knowledge.

 

So it's certainly doable, but it will have a very steep learning curve to it. I would recommend waiting until you pass AP Chem, at the very least.

[hypervalent_iodine]

It is of course possible, but you find yourself needing to study a lot of basics first. But hey, if you have the motivation, by all means go for it. I would recommend you start by studying from a general chemistry text book first (Blackman's, "Chemistry" is the book used here) and work your way up. You may, however, find it more useful to build up your foundation knowledge with AP chem, as A Tripolation suggested.

[Horza2002]

As Hyper says, you would simply have to do a extra work to get the basics as well. I would recomend the book "Organic Chemistry" by Clayden, Greeves, Warren and Wothers. This book goes from the basics (such as what are bonds?, pK_a) all the way upto assymetric catalysis. It does take a bit of reading to get your head around though...but thats chemistry

[mississippichem]

I would make sure that I had mastered many of the general chemistry concepts before moving on to organic, especially equilibrium and a little bit of kinetics (not the hardcore p-chem kinetics, just the basics). Also you should be very comfortable with acid /base trends, valence rules, as well as electron configurations for the p and s-blocks.

 

You can definitely teach yourself some organic chemistry, just remember to learn how to "push-arrows" instead of just memorizing reactions. If you don't know what I'm talking about here you will soon enough once you get into the basic reaction types like S_N2, E1...etc.

[bandgeek0295]

Thank you for the input everyone. I think I'll just focus on Chem basics for the next year. I'll give OC a go next summer, depending on how AP Chem goes.

[amanda more]

Thank you for the input everyone. I think I'll just focus on Chem basics for the next year. I'll give OC a go next summer, depending on how AP Chem goes.

 

I was able to take the second semester of organic chemistry in college using a tutor and a test.

 

It was amazingly productive this way. Anything I stumbled on in the book the PHD organic chemist explained.

[alpha2cen]

I was able to take the second semester of organic chemistry in college using a tutor and a test.

 

It was amazingly productive this way. Anything I stumbled on in the book the PHD organic chemist explained.

 

This is a good way. And very economic way. Self study is not easy. The difficult thing is we do not know where to go and where are we.