My O. Chem I/II wasn't that hard. I do think that in some ways the course parallels CS 101 education.
Students that don't have an intuitive grasp for 3D logic are lost early on and have trouble keeping up. Chirality is something you either "get" or you don't--and that understanding is based on logic that is developed at an early age. Is there really an effective way to teach people how to manipulate stereogenic centers of molecules in their head if they haven't been rotating mental pictures in their mind from a young age? I don't think that stick figures and plastic models help much.
One of the most important investments early on is practicing switching between the various projections of molecules. My professor always tried to trip us up by giving us deceptive encodings of molecules and we had precious little time to convert them.
There are maybe 50 reactions throughout O.Chem I/II that you have to "memorize". Grouping them by functionality helps, but ultimately they all mostly follow the same consistent inner logic--just follow the movement of the electrons. It's all rule-based! Take time to perhaps practice synthesis and retrosynthesis as they require you to mentally traverse chemical space quickly. (Kind of like BFS where the edges are chemical reactions. Heuristic: note substructures to cut down the search space.)
Reading IR, H/C13 NMR, and MS isn't that difficult and takes maybe a weekend to learn all of the intricacies. Once you can read them, just use careful tallying and logic to determine the molecular structures of unknowns from spectra.
I would highly recommend these courses to a CS major looking for an elective or two as a means of really getting to know the chemical makeup of the world. (Maybe they can pull you into doing computational chemistry!) The courses are a fun logical exercise, and the labs are great!
I have yet to take advanced organic, but from what I understand it is much more math-intensive. MO theory, etc.
Students that don't have an intuitive grasp for 3D logic are lost early on and have trouble keeping up. Chirality is something you either "get" or you don't--and that understanding is based on logic that is developed at an early age. Is there really an effective way to teach people how to manipulate stereogenic centers of molecules in their head if they haven't been rotating mental pictures in their mind from a young age? I don't think that stick figures and plastic models help much.
One of the most important investments early on is practicing switching between the various projections of molecules. My professor always tried to trip us up by giving us deceptive encodings of molecules and we had precious little time to convert them.
There are maybe 50 reactions throughout O.Chem I/II that you have to "memorize". Grouping them by functionality helps, but ultimately they all mostly follow the same consistent inner logic--just follow the movement of the electrons. It's all rule-based! Take time to perhaps practice synthesis and retrosynthesis as they require you to mentally traverse chemical space quickly. (Kind of like BFS where the edges are chemical reactions. Heuristic: note substructures to cut down the search space.)
Reading IR, H/C13 NMR, and MS isn't that difficult and takes maybe a weekend to learn all of the intricacies. Once you can read them, just use careful tallying and logic to determine the molecular structures of unknowns from spectra.
I would highly recommend these courses to a CS major looking for an elective or two as a means of really getting to know the chemical makeup of the world. (Maybe they can pull you into doing computational chemistry!) The courses are a fun logical exercise, and the labs are great!
I have yet to take advanced organic, but from what I understand it is much more math-intensive. MO theory, etc.