organic chem functional groups help

[sweet candy]

i dont understand functional groups...i know this sounds odd, but i just cant seem to visualize them....apart from alcohol and carboxylic acid...can anyone help me? how did you get to grips with organic chem?

[Drake Glau]

Look at them as individual groups. That's what they are. If you see a double bonded oxygen know that is going to either be a ketone or an ester or the carboxylic acid (or other things I possibly don't know ). There's things like that that are specific to each functional group and if you see them know which ones it could match and then narrow it down as you observe it more and more. Carboxylic acid for example also has a hydroxyl group, but because of the other oxygen is coming off the same carbon, it makes it the acid instead. Just like with ketones, is the double bonded oxygen sitting by itself or is it connected to a carbon that has some other stuff going on that makes it the ester?

Edited January 9, 2011 by Walter Glau

[Sandwich]

There's actually a very good flowchart of all the reactions listed in the syllabus. Try annotating it with the functional groups (I did it by funny sounds COO, CHO, COOH etc. seemed vaguely amusing to me and that was enough to remember them!) then committing it to memory. It ticks a lot of boxes with the learning of a single thing 'cause you get all the reaction pathways too. You should also add on reagents and conditions By seeing what gets changed into what, you can actually use that to help you recall the functional groups.

[kiwi.at.heart]

I know how you feel, when I first did Organic Chemistry I found it impossible to be able to remember one functional group from another. The way I got around this was creating my own little way of remembering each group. For example, I remember what a ketone is by thinking that when the double-bonded O came off the carbon it looked a little like a keyhole. Some of my ways are a little weird and most people cant understand how I remember that way but the point is, I can remember them, because I was able to, in my head, make connections from the functional groups to other things allowing me to remember them as something I understand rather than a random configuration of extra atoms. If simply trying to remember them by looking at a piece of paper with the functional groups on it is simply not working for you, get creative and find you own personal way to remember them whether that is drawing diagrams or flow charts or associating them with other things.