What are some common mistakes students make with carbon chemistry?

1 Answer
Dec 7, 2015

Being intimidated by it.

Explanation:

When you are first introduced to Organic Chemistry it seems absolutely overwhelming. There are so many reactions, and so many different circumstances. However, most organic reactions can be swiftly generalized into the interaction between nucleophiles (electron-rich species), and electrophiles (electron-poor species), and you swiftly learn to recognize each species, and predict their interaction.

The number of #C-C# bond forming reactions is still depressingly few, and you will quickly commit these to memory, and learn to apply them to standard problems.