Introduction

Organic chemistry, though widely recognized as a challenging subject, stands out as one of the most fascinating and rewarding courses you'll ever encounter. This course offers you a unique opportunity to delve into the quantum realm, manipulating atoms and molecules to synthesize a variety of compounds, from pharmaceuticals and pesticides to dyes, as well as materials such as plastics and other polymers. It's rare, outside perhaps some art courses, to find another class that allows you to create in such a tangible way.

Through this course, I hope you'll start to view molecules and materials from a new perspective, honing your chemical intuition. To an organic chemist, a molecule isn't just a structure; it's a puzzle with specific physical and chemical properties dictated by its molecular configuration. This different viewpoint is what sets organic chemists apart from other scientists, including some chemists.

As you embark on this journey into organic chemistry, remember that the essence of a molecule – its structure – is what determines its behavior and interactions. Start questioning and exploring:

• What structural features does a molecule have, and how do these features influence its physical properties like boiling point, melting point, solubility, and chromatographic behavior?
• What significant intermolecular forces are elicited by these structural characteristics?

Additionally, consider the molecule's chemical reactivity:

• What structural elements are crucial for its reactivity?
• Where are the electrons located? Are they in lone pairs, π bonds, or in the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO)?
• Where are electrons absent? Are there unoccupied orbitals or a lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO)?
• Are there acidic protons or basic lone pairs of electrons?