World View: Life, Science, and the Ramblings of a Mad Man

Organic Chemistry is conquerable. It can even be—and don’t hurt me for this—fun and occasionally sexy.

Although organic chemistry has been called the Hell of College, the killer of premeds, and God-knows how many other hateful names, it can actually be kinda cool (ignoring the whole…"having to memorize equations and learn exceptions and learning to name things and organic lab"…thing). I’ll try to go through the most important concepts of organic in a not-so-painful way.

Organic chemistry (concepts) can be boiled down to three main ideas, concepts, forces—whatever you wanna call them. Here are the main ideas behind it:

Attraction (oh, God, she‘s SOOO hot!)

Lust (lets face it, some people just want more, others make YOU want more)

Size (well, it DOES matter, regardless of what small guys say…)

Righto, now that I have everyone’s attention, here goes. Attraction. You know, you remember that first crush in kindergarten. The way her hair looked when she was drinking from that milk carton…well, ok, so it has more to do with charges in organic. This is basic chemistry; atoms are made of a nucleus with protons (positively charged, with one unit of “plus” each) and neutrons (the charge of which you can hopefully figure out from the name, and if not, please stop reading) and of a “cloud” of electrons (minus one charge on those guys) that “fly” around the nucleus (quantum physics tells us they never know exactly where they are or where they are going, so we say “cloud” and “fly” cuz there’s no better way of explaining it without confusing EVERYONE.) Some atoms have more electrons than protons, so they are negatively charged. Some have less, and they are positively charged. Make sense? These atoms can be by themselves or they can be in a molecule with other atoms. So molecules, like atoms, can have charges. And, as you can see with magnets (although it’s a different type of charge with those), sitcoms, reality shows, and just life in general, opposites attract. Positive charges like negative and vice versa because they quench each other. When they are together, they are no longer charged, so they are satiated…hehe. I always loved hearing my teachers say dirty things.

So, now that everyone knows what attraction’s all about, how about we conquer lust? I’m assuming an older audience, now that you’ve gotten through my first paragraph, so let’s do it. Lust can be seen as a stronger, more sexual form of attraction, but really, it’s not lust until you’re ready to act on it. If the situation were to present itself, you’d jump to it, or on it, or whatever. Lust is actually being active about being attracted. So molecules, even molecules that are attracted to each other, might not react unless they have a STRONG, SEXUAL attraction to each other, that is, they lust each other. In chemistry, it is said that the negative molecules are the ones that do the “attacking.” They are the ones that go out and get the positive molecules. If a molecule is negatively charged, and it’s a very lustful molecule (electronegative for those of you who’ve had a chem class), then it will probably react with just about anything around it. If, on the other hand, a molecule is neutral, or even negative, but not very lustful (not very electronegative), then the molecule will be less likely to react. So far we have charges attract, and lustful negative molecules attack vulnerable positive molecules. Nothing too bad. On to size…

Sorry for you…ill-equipped guys, but size does matter. I mean, hypothetically, say you’re with a big girl. A really big girl. What happens? Haha, see what I mean? NOTHING. But if the girl is small, very small, then you can probably get away with…well, not much. So what the hell does that have to do with chemistry? Well, molecules, like humans, have reactive sites…places where they will attach to make a new molecule (or detach to make two new ones, or change, etc. etc.) If there are two molecules that are very attracted to each other and the negative molecule is very electronegative, then it is likely they will react (according to everything I’ve told you up until this point), but if they are both very big molecules, then their reactive sites can’t get close enough to each other to allow the magic to happen. They simply wont come close enough because of the volume the rest of their bodies take up, and they won't be able to react. This is called steric hindrance, for those of you who want to impress your parents at the dinner table, or something. Say there are a few molecules that are likely to react with a third molecule; if one of these is much bigger than the other, it is much more likely that the smaller of the two will be able to get close enough to the reactive site of the said third molecule and will be able to react. So, summarizing, attractiveness, lust, and size. All you need to know about chemistry (unless you’re dumb enough to be a chemistry major, biology major, premed/pre-professional, or just take chem classes for fun… then you should be reading Comus' articles on stupid people).

Now the ugly part: the partial list of stuff outside this… view of chemistry that you’ll proly need to know if you are one of those people dumb enough to call yourself an organic chemistry student. Naming—oh God, naming. You need to be able to look at a molecule and name it or take a name and draw a molecule. Stereochemistry (so size is important, but it’s not the only thing going on…) You need to know where the reactive sites of molecules are, which are more likely to react, and what will happen once they do; in other words, what the molecule will look like in space after the reaction. That’s the part where back-side attacks, spontaneous leaving groups, SN1, SN2 E1, and E2 reactions come in, and then your life starts to suck. You’ll need to memorize reactions…lots and lots of reactions. And then you’ll have to be able to line up reactions to form new molecules (a euphemism used by chemists for this is “synthesis”, and it’s fucking hell).

Oh, almost forgot, what good is knowing that positive and negative charges attract when you don’t know what molecule is positive or negative? And what good is it to know that size does matter when you don’t know how big something has to be for it to not be able to react? And how do you know if a molecule is lustful (electronegative) or if it‘s quite the opposite (electropositive)? Well, if you take Org, you’ll know. And I guess my English teachers would fail me for this, but I’m gonna go ahead and conclude by saying my intro was bullshit. Organic chemistry COULD be fun, but they don’t teach it remedially as I just did, so it sucks—a lot. For those of you who have been through this hell, I’m sorry. For those of you who haven’t, thank me for making it so easy on you (and NEVER take it).

NEVER!