The University of Missouri at Columbia
Chemistry 210 - Organic Chemistry I - Winter Semester 2002

Aristotle's World Aristotle (384-322 BC) was very wrong ... we are getting better but beware!

The Modern World

Organic Chemistry A Brief Introduction By Example A very simple piece of DNA is shown. Understanding DNA is of interest to many areas including Chemistry, Biochemistry, Biology, Medicine, ... and of course Philosophy. To begin to understand anything about this very special molecule we need to analyze the molecule and then test hypotheses we have come up with. nomenclature recognize building blocks and functional groups recognize properties of fragments connections between building blocks polymerization of monomer 3d-stereochemistry of monomers & polymers structure determination

About Learning in Customary Educational Settings

Similarly, no one has been able to confirm any certain limits to the speed with which man can learn. Schools and universities have usually been organized as if to suggest that all students learn at about the same rather plodding and regular speed. But, whenever the actual rates at which different people learn have been tested, nothing has been found to justify such an organization. Not only do individuals learn at vastly different speeds and in different ways, but man seems capable of astonishing feats of rapid learning when the attendant circumstances are favourable. It seems that, in customary educational settings, one habitually uses only a tiny fraction of one's learning capacities. [Emphasis ours]

Excerpt from the Encyclopaedia Britannica

Complexities of Human Learning

Human learning is complex rather than simple. Learners are apt to learn more than one thing at a time. Sometimes this process is conscious, as when one simultaneously or rapidly assimilates many specific items of a whole. More often, the process is entirely or partly unconscious, as when the student learns some "content" consciously but at the same time absorbs unwittingly a great deal more from interrelationships, tones of voice, and so on.

Educators are therefore becoming increasingly concerned with these concomitant learnings. They are aware that the long-term significance of the arithmetical skill that the student consciously learns may be nugatory compared with the importance of what he learns about himself as a learner, about his capacities and limits, about his relationship with his teacher, about power and authority, about his relationships with his fellow students, about equality, collaboration, competition, and friendship. As educators become more knowledgeable about the importance of learning climates, they are impelled to abandon simplified techniques of teaching in favour of a more complex approach that views learning in the context of a matrix of relationships and forces that act upon the student, the teacher, the school, and the community.

Excerpt from the Encyclopaedia Britannica

Book Adoption Policy.

I am recommending two books to you. The text by Carey is the text currently adopted by the MU Organic Chemistry Divison and this text is therefore the required text for this course. My course organization coincides with the organization of the book by Wade and some of you might find that text helpful as well.

Feel free to use any other text on Organic Chemistry. There is general agreement among all the books about the core curriculum at this level of chemistry instruction. Using several books or switching between books from one course to the next can, in fact, be an advantage. Getting another perspective is a positive experience. Comparing two texts emphasizes key areas and diminishes tangential issues.

For the purpose of testing and performance assessment, the course content is defined by the activities during regularly scheduled meeting times.

Course Materials I. Books and Model Sets.

(1.1) Required Text: Organic Chemistry, F. A. Carey; 4th ed., McGraw-Hill, Dubuque, IA, 2000. ISBN 0-07-290501-8. Cost: $ 150.75 bundled with item 1.2 (at MU Bookstore).

(1.2) Required Study Guide: Study Guide and Solutions Manual, R. C. Atkins, F. A. Carey; McGraw-Hill, Dubuque, IA, 2000. ISBN 0-07-290501-7. Cost: $ 150.75 bundled with item 1.1 (at MU Bookstore).

(2.1) Recommended Text: Organic Chemistry, Leroy G. Wade, Jr.; 4th ed., Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458, 1999. ISBN 0-13-922741-5. Cost: $102.70 (at MU Bookstore).

(2.2) Recommended Study Guide: Study Guide and Solutions Manual for Organic Chemistry, Jan W. Simek; 4th ed., Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458, 1999. ISBN 0-13-974023-6. Cost: $52 (at MU Bookstore).

(3) Required Model Set: HGS Molecular Model Set, C Set for Organic Chemistry, W. H. Freeman and Company. ISBN 0-7167-1972-X. Cost: $32.

(4) Study Option: Organic Nomenclature - A Programmed Introduction, Traynham, J. G., 5th Ed., Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458. ISBN0-13-270752-7. Cost: $26.

(5) Study Option: Pushing Electrons - A Guide for Students of Organic Chemistry, Weeks, S. P., 2nd ed., Updated version, Saunders College Publishing, Harcourt Brace & Company, 8th Floor, Orlando, Florida, 32887. ISBN 0-03-011652-X. Cost: $16.75.

(6) Study Option: Electron Flow in Organic Chemistry, Scudder, P. H., John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1992. ISBN 0-471-61381-9. Cost: $__.

Course Materials II. Resources of the World Wide Web & The New York Times.

We will make extensive use of the world wide web as a tool for instruction. The Chemistry is in the News project, the Visualization Centers, the Web Destinations and the "Reaction Animations" all are web based. In addition, the group collaborations will involve online research using the world wide web and posting of the resulting report on the world wide web.

As part of the "Chemistry is in the News" project, you are required to read The New York Times this semester. The New York Times is the Nation's newspaper and features a superb science section in its Tuesday edition. In fact, there are many articles in The New York Times every day that are in some way related to science in general and chemistry in particular. We want to learn to see these connections! In previous semesters, I have frequently based test questions on NYT articles and I will continue this practice. So, keeping up with the Times will be good for your chemistry grade. There are several ways for you to read The New York Times and these are:

[a] Buy a subscription of The New York Times for $0.40 per day and pick it up every morning at the General Books Information Desk at the University Bookstore in Brady Commons. I am encouraging you to go with this option; there is nothing like browsing the hardcopy! Subscription forms for WS02, M-F, 75 issues for $30, will be distributed in class at the end of the first lecture.

[b] Get your daily copy of The New York Times from one of the vending machines on campus.

[c] Read the online version of The New York Times and print out what you like.

Prerequisites

Chemistry 32 with a grade of C- or better.

Activities

I. Time Commitment

Chemistry 210 is a 3-credit hour course. This means that you are expected to spend (at least) 9 hours every week studying for this course. In other words, for every hour you spend in lecture, you are expected to study another two hours. And before tests you might want to put in a few extra hours on top of the regular weekly commitment of 9 hours. If you invest the time, you will do well.

Just coming to lecture and putting in a few hours before a test is a strategy that does not work in chemistry. There have to be a permanent effort and a planned commitment of time to spend on studying chemistry. Students often have difficulty with time management and this is a skill that needs training. Keep a time sheet, for example, and write down honestly what you studied at what time. "Interruptions" do not count as study time. We will have a "study habits" module in February.

II. Lectures

Come to class well prepared! Do read the material before it is covered in class. The lecture will be much more beneficial to you if you do. One of the advantages of being well prepared is simply that you need to write less during the lecture and, instead, you will be able to follow the lecture intellectually. I am providing all of my notes to you so that we can in fact spend considerable time "talking about chemistry" in class. After the lecture, read the material again and test yourself, possibly in small groups. If uncertainties remain, review the material again or come to see me during office hours.

III. Collaborative Group Activities

Chemistry is very much like a language. You need to learn the structures and the names of compounds and their properties. This is much like learning the spelling and the meaning of a new word in a foreign language. Then you need to learn the rules governing the reactions of these molecules. There is a grammar to chemistry just like there is grammar in language. Nobody would expect a language student to be able to speak the language after "attending lectures" and "studying the book." Of course not! A language is learned by "speaking in the language" and the same is true for chemistry. You need to put yourself in situations in which you "talk chemistry."

We will partition the class into student groups of 3-5 students. These peer groups will give everybody a forum to "talk chemistry." Look to the members of your group to discuss problems you encounter in lecture, compare notes, discuss strategy in problem-solving ... and exercise your chemistry knowledge through these active learning activities.

We will partition the class into sections containing 5 groups each. The Collaborative Learning (CL) sections will meet regularly on Tuesdays for one hour, see Contact Hours starting in the third week of the semester, Tuesday, February 5, 2002. All CL sections will meet in the Chemistry Computer room in 105 Schlundt Hall. The assignment to the CL sessions is made by group numbers as is indicated on the Project Page (see Collaborative Learning).

IV. Computer-Laboratory

You will engage in a variety of computer-assisted learning activities. These activities will include working with web-based teaching materials and hands-on molecular drawing and modeling. Instructions and introductions to these activities will occur in the Collaborative Learning sessions in the Chemistry Computer Rooms with guidance provided by the Graduate Student Teaching Assistants. You can pursue the web-based activities later on at any time from any place. The molecular drawing and modeling exercises require special software only available in the computer laboratory of the Department of Chemistry.

We recommend that you study the Visualization Centers in small groups. It is one of the aims of the web-based teaching materials to improve your understanding of structure and to begin to see how structure affects function. The Visualization Centers provide accurate structures of selected molecules in an online format. Each structure can be viewed from user-selected perspective and a mini-tutorial is provided for guidance. Talk about the minitutorials and talk about the structures displayed.

The establishment of relevance is an important co-factor in the learning process. An excellent way to establish the relevance of the content of Chemistry 210 is by way of connecting the course content to the real world. We will study Chemistry is in the News items to construct these connections between chemistry and society. These teaching materials are based on the philosophy that "newspapers mirror society and newspaper therefore allow to construct the important relations between society and chemistry." There is one "news item" per chapter and it includes one published newspaper article, editorial comments, and questions. The editorial comment section often includes links to high quality sites on the world wide web.

Further guidance to WWW sites is provided by the Portal to Organic Chemistry on the World Wide Web. Ths collection of chemistry related links is permanently under construction. You are invited to tell me about sites you would like to have added.

Hands-on molecular drawing and modeling activities will make use of ChemOffice. ChemDraw is a structure drawing program and Chem3D is a versatile molecular modelling program. You will learn how to draw structures and include those in reports. You will learn how to find the "best" structure of a molecule and you can visualize the molecular orbitals and many other properties.

The materials covered in these web-based teaching materials and/or computer-assisted activities will be revisited in the tests. About 25 percent of each test will be concerned with these materials. The collaborative group project will consist in the creation of a "Chemistry is in the News" item and these projects will be evaluated by peer review.

V. Exercises - Offline and Online

You are asked to work a selection of the problems in the textbook and online multiple-choice tests posted at the Chemistry 210 Course Web Site. You are not required to return the answers. You should work these problems on your own, discuss difficult issues and check answers with the members of your collaborative group. Some of these problems will be revisited in the tests. About one quarter of the tests will inquire about problems that were assigned previously.

VI. Reviews - Discussion List

Discussion/review sessions will be scheduled as part of the "Active Learning" sessions and they are taught by the Graduate Student teaching assistents. These sessions include further discussion of topics presented in lectures, discussions of problems, working on problem solving strategies, and preparation for tests. To encourage discussions amongst yourselves, you will be subscribed to the Chemistry 210 Discussion List.

VII. Meet Your Teacher

Every other week or so, there will be a Chem 210 lunch. These lunches will happen at the Memorial Union or at the Heidelberg. Everybody is welcome!

Examinations and Grading

The Greek philosopher Socrates argued that the unexamined life is not worth living. He is right and, as is shown in the table, a total of 800 points can be earned in Chemistry 210. The tests will focus on the materials covered recently, but it is expected that you recall the fundamentals of previously studied chapters.

	Evaluated Examination or Activities   Points
        Exam 1 on Atoms & Bonding                50
        Exam 2 on Alkanes                       100
        Study Habit Survey                       25 for participation 
        Exam 3 on Radical Chain Reactions        50
        Exam 4 on Stereochem. & Nucl. Subst.    100
        Exam 5 on Alkene Formation               50
        Exam 6 on Alkene Reactions              100
        Collaborative Group Project             100 by Peer Review
        Group Dynamics Reports                   25 for participation
        Exam 7 Final on Arenes, NMR & IR        200 
        Total Points in Course                  800  

        Grade A+ above 95%, grade A above 90%, grade A- above 85%, 
        Grade B+ above 80%, grade B above 75%, grade B- above 70%,
        Grade C+ above 65%, grade C above 60%, grade C- above 55%,
        Grade D+ above 50%, grade D above 45%, grade D- above 40%;  
        Grade F  less than 40%.  

Academic Honesty

Academic honesty is fundamental to activities and principles of a university. All members of the academic community must be confident that each person's work has been responsibly and honorably acquired, developed, and presented. Any effort to gain an advantage not given to all students is dishonest whether or not the effort is successful. The academic community regards academic dishonesty as an extremely serious matter, with serious consequences that range from probation to expulsion. When in doubt about plagiarism, paraphrasing, quoting, or collaboration, consult the course instructor. Proven academic dishonesty will be reported to the Provost for Academic Affairs and the student's Dean. (8/2/00)

Instructional Communication Policy

MU is determined to promote effective communication between students and academic personnel involved in instruction. To report communication problems with the instructor or the teaching assistants, please contact Dr. John Adams, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Chemistry; e-mail: AdamsJE@missouri.edu.

Compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act

If you have special needs as addressed by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and need assistance, please notify the Office of Disability Services, A048 Brady Commons, 882-4696 or the course instructor immediately. Reasonable efforts will be made to accomodate your special needs. (8/2/00)

Excellence is a Habit