Subject Code/Name: CHEM2021 - Organic Chemistry: Mechanisms and Biomolecules Contact Hours: 4 hr of lectures a week (4 x 1 hour lectures), 4 hr lab
Assumed Knowledge: First Year Chem Courses (CHEM1031 and CHEM1041) and CHEM2041
Assessment: TOO MANY assignments
- 5 lab practicals (worth 30% in total, so 6% each in which you have a mark out of 30 - 6 marks for lab book, 9 marks for core skills, 15 marks for lab report)
- Mid semester exam (17%)
- Assignment on Topic 2 (Carbonyl Chemistry) (3%)
- Assignment on Topic 3 (Aromatic Chemistry) (3%)
- In class quiz / exam on Topic 4 (Biologically important organic compounds) (3%)
- Final Exam (120 marks and 44%)
Lecture Recordings? Yes, but some lecturers write stuff on the board. I didn't go to lectures (as I self learnt a lot from the textbook) but if you are someone who is going to probably struggle in the course a very good idea to attend them
Notes/Materials Available: Moodle slides are fairly good for overall content and but the issue is sometimes mechanisms are not in the lecture slides for the harder reactions, which is very annoying as the harder reactions can be very difficult to understand the first time and you don't know what to search up, so you end up having to use like youtube videos and wasting time figuring out which one links to your concept.
A good YouTube channel I found really helpful was Leah4sci
Textbook: Organic Chemistry 7th Edition by Paula Bruice (VERY VERY VERY useful. This textbook is amazing and very well written and has lots more examples to understand things than you would directly from the lecture slides)
Lecturer(s): Professor Martina Stenzel, Dr Vinh Nyugen, Dr Albert Fahrenbach
Year & Trimester of completion: 2019 trimester 2
Difficulty: 5
Overall Rating: 4
Your Mark/Grade: 95 HD (for any future student that cares this was the mark for 1st ranking)
Comments: This course is very difficult if you are not someone who enjoys or is good at organic chemistry. If you struggled in the organic chemistry section in chemistry 1B, then you are going to struggle in this course most likely. The road map they provide you in Chemistry 1B in first year is no longer present in 2nd year organic chemistry. You have to memorise that whole table and every mechanism off by heart x 4, because there are 4 topics in 2nd year organic. This course does have a lot of memorising (roughly 100-200 reactions and around 50-80 mechanisms), so it is something you can't just do last minute. The best way I found to study was I made notes from the textbook early on (finished by like week 8 in the term), and then I spent the remainder weeks just memorising the reactions and doing the practice problems provided by the lecturers and additional questions I did from the textbook. A lot of people at the end of the course thought they failed the final exam so make sure you study hard for it.
The lab component is also very different from first year courses. In this course you have 5 practicals, which usually last for 2 weeks long. There is also 5 lab reports you have to write for each experiment which end up meaning you have to write something like 1.5-2k words every fortnight. This is not fun at the beginning because the way you write the lab reports in this course will be in a scientific format you probably haven't learnt at school or in first year, so don't worry too much if you don't do well in the first practical. I myself got like 25/30 in the first practical but learnt from the comments given and all labs after that I was scoring 28-29/30.
The mid semester exam was nice in that a lot of the questions they used were similar to the practice questions given with a few different ones, so make sure you know how to do all the questions in that set provided and you should do fairly well. There are also three other assignments. Two of them are take home where you answer around 30 marks of exam like questions and then submit them for marking and the last one is a short quiz in class. Most people did okay in the carbonyl one, but marks in the aromatic section were almost a fail as the average was around 16/30 (one tip here make sure you write the full mechanisms for the ortho, para and meta, even if it only subs on one of those positions as this is where a lot of marks were lost by people).
Overall the course was quite difficult, but I enjoyed it because I found the course interesting. I wouldn't recommend this course to someone as an elective type of thing that did first year chem, because it may kill your wam, but it is compulsory for chemistry majors and chemical engineering people so make sure you come prepared for this class, as it is probably the most difficult of the 2nd year chemistry courses in my opinion