About Organic Chemistry This course is designed to provide a fundamental overview of organic chemistry to students interested in pursuing a career in the sciences and preparing students for a college level organic chemistry course. Organic Chemistry will focus on integration of chemical principles to the rich chemistry of carbon and carbon-based compounds. The course will help students understand the relationship between structure and function of molecules, the major classes of reactions, reaction energetics and mechanisms, the diversity of organic molecules in plants, bacteria, and animals, analytical techniques (such as separation, purification, and synthesis) of organic compounds, and how to determine molecular structure of various functional groups (alcohols, aldehydes, carboxylic acids, amines) via various spectroscopic techniques. Interwoven throughout the course, the student will have multiple opportunities to further hone the idea of the scientific method, concept of error, importance of reproducibility of results, and the proposition of viable hypotheses, in line with the scientific practices in the Next Generation Science Standards.
Students will participate in weekly molecular modeling and/or micro-scale labs in which they will safely perform a variety of experiments. Lab results will be recorded in students’ laboratory notebook and students will write-up a formal lab reports.