Crash Course Organic Chemistry Preview

Key Takeaways

hi i'm daboki chakravarti and welcome to crash course organic chemistry organic chemistry takes everything you know and love from general chemistry to the next level from electrons to acid-base reactions except the organic means we're specifically dealing with the chemistry of carbon from the interesting structures that it makes to the reactions that carbon containing compounds do this subject is notorious for being complicated because there are so many types of organic compounds with unique properties and reactivity from the caffeine in your morning tea that kickstarts your brain to the circuitry that makes your cell phone lightweight and portable organic chemistry is practically everywhere there are actually over 16 million known organic molecules so yes it can seem overwhelming but there are patterns using basic tools some practice and by taking things a step at a time i hope you'll grow to like it as much as i do and before i get too deep into the chemistry i should introduce myself i'm diboki chuckervardi and trust me i have experienced the highs and lows of organic chemistry i have a phd in biomedical engineering from spending seven years making cancer-fighting immune cells and my favorite thing about biomedical engineering was learning how the tiniest bits of our cells come together to make our bodies work so much of that is rooted in the chemistry of molecules from what they look like to how they interact with each other now i'm a science writer slash communicator because i love to talk about all the cool science i've learned and i'm excited to dive into organic chemistry with you the first part of this series is about the tools that help us understand organic chemistry things like bonding structure and naming molecules molecules like 3s 8s 9s 10r13r14s17r 10 13 dimethyl17 2r6 methyl heptane 2l 23478 911 12 14 15 16 17 dodeca hydro one h cyclopenta alpha phenanthra threol otherwise known as cholesterol since we can't actually see these atoms and molecules that we're talking about we'll discover how chemists make observations do experiments and propose theories to understand the chemical and physical properties of the molecules that make the universe tick once we have a basic toolbox we'll start building molecules from small molecules like ethanol to giant macromolecules like high density polyethylene aka the plastic and milk jugs and soda bottles we'll look into the logic behind elimination reactions substitution reactions pericyclic reactions and more and just as a heads up you will have to do some practice yourself to really master them in the second half of the course we'll get into the multi-step synthesis of larger molecules and learn about a cornerstone drug in the fight against infection penicillin we'll also look at other important developments in the pharmaceutical industry because you need organic chemistry to understand health medicine and the biochemistry of how your body works so yes organic chemistry can be complicated and sometimes it can feel like you're randomly pushing around electrons and hoping for the best but together we're going to make sense of the chaos and hopefully have some fun along the way if you want to get really ready before crash course organic chemistry starts you can re-watch episode 24 from our general chemistry series which is all about lewis structures so um by the way hank says there are no quadruple covalent bonds but there are we just need a metal center to make them happen see you in the first episode [Music] you