Introductory Organic Chemistry

Module code: CH1201

Organic materials and compounds all contain carbon atoms. They comprise most known chemicals, form the basis for all life on Earth and have a huge amount of commercial applications. This module will introduce you to the basic principles and theories behind organic chemistry.

Topics covered

• How to recognise functional groups, anticipate their reactivity and interconversions, and the reagents required for these transformations
• Identifying and explaining the relationships between isomers and conformers of organic molecules.
• Rationalising and predicting reactivity based on curly arrow mechanisms and diagrams
• How structure and bonding control the outcome and rate of organic reactions
• The differences between a variety of reaction mechanisms including nucleophilic substitution, elimination reactions, reactions of alkenes, reactions of carbonyls and electrophilic aromatic substitution
• Predicting and interpreting spectroscopic data for organic molecules whose structures are known; deduce structures of molecules using spectroscopic and analytical data