We’ve all heard the phrase “opposites attract.” It may or may not be true for people, but it’s definitely true in organic chemistry. In this episode of Crash Course Organic Chemistry, we’re learning about electronegativity, polarity, resonance structures, and resonance hybrids. We’ll practice a very important skill for this course that will help us avoid a lot of memorization in the future: electron pushing. It’ll be a lot of trial and error at first, but we all start somewhere!

So far in this series we’ve focused on molecules with tens of atoms in them, but in organic chemistry molecules can get way bigger! Polymers are molecules that contain hundreds, thousands, or even millions of identical subunits. In this episode of Crash Course Organic Chemistry, we’ll look at different examples of addition and condensation polymers, learn about different types of polymerization, and see how a polymer’s morphology affects its properties. Plus we’ll see how some of the polymers we encounter every day were discovered by accident!

Throughout this series we’ve mostly talked about pairs of electrons, but electrons don’t always have a buddy. An atom or group of atoms with a single unpaired electron is called a radical. In this episode of Crash Course Organic Chemistry, we’ll learn all about radicals including the three key steps in a radical reaction and Hammond’s Postulate, an important tool to help us understand these reactions. We’ll also see ways radicals can react with alkanes, alkenes, and alkynes.

As we construct more complex organic molecules, it can start to feel like decrypting a complex code. Organic synthesis takes simple starting materials, and turns them into complex structures, and reverse engineering can help us figure out the steps in between. In this episode of Crash Course Organic Chemistry, we’ll practice multistep synthesis problems, learn about how we can use retro synthesis to make more complex molecules, and use liquid-liquid extraction to separate solvents. As always, we’ll work through examples and connect everything back to our Mold Medicine Map!

The shape of molecules is super important to life as we know it. In this episode of Crash Course Organic Chemistry we’re learning about stereochemistry and how to identify molecules as chiral or achiral. And as always, we’ll be doing a lot of practice!

We’ve already learned a bit about substitution reactions in organic chemistry and the two different paths they can follow: SN1 and SN2. In order to better predict the products of a substitution reaction and understand how they work, we need to be able to figure out which mechanism a reaction is likely to follow. In this episode of Crash Course Organic Chemistry, we’ll deepen our knowledge of substitution reactions by looking at factors like substrate structure and reaction conditions to determine whether SN1 or SN2 is the more likely mechanism.

We’re going back to the lab! So far we’ve learned some important lab techniques that organic chemists might use day to day, like chromatography and proton NMR, but there are even more to learn. In this episode of Crash Course Organic Chemistry, we’ll introduce some new lab techniques such as distillation and recrystallization and apply them to everything we’ve been learning about EAS reactions. And we’ll do some synthesis problems!

Even though all living things have a lot in common, different organisms can have very different reactions to the same organic chemicals. That means it’s really important for organic chemists to be able to purify chemicals and separate the products we want from reactions, from the side products we don’t. In this episode of Crash Course Organic Chemistry, we’re heading into the lab to learn about one of the ways we can separate chemicals in a mixture: chromatography!

In organic chemistry, different reactions can take place at vastly different speeds. To better understand whether a reaction actually will happen, and how useful that reaction is, we need to understand thermodynamics and kinetics. In this episode of Crash Course Organic Chemistry, we’ll review some important concepts from general chemistry, learn how to draw energy diagrams, go over the difference between an intermediate and a transition state, and get an introduction to catalysts.

Organic chemistry is pretty much everywhere! In this episode of Crash Course Organic Chemistry, we’re talking about the amazing diversity among organic molecules. We’ll learn about the origins of organic chemistry, how to write Lewis structures, condensed structures, and skeletal formulas, and what gross organic compound the Romans used to dye their fabrics pretty colors.