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November 3rd, 2013 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
How to Get an A- in Organic Chemistry
November 2nd, 2013
I mainly liked her description of organic chemistry, which made me laugh, but I was shocked to learn that she’s my age and has small children.
Having children has easily lowered my IQ 20 points and I feel lucky to be able to function at all. However, even when I was still sharp, before baby brain and Internet brain, I would have really struggled with ochem. To imagine going through that now… Man, after my kids have been fed, bathed and tucked into bed at night, I feel lucky if I can manage to drink a couple of beers and play Bloons.
Via: New York Times:
So what is organic chemistry, anyway? And why is it so difficult? Basically, orgo examines how molecules containing carbon interact, but it doesn’t require equations or math, as in physics. Instead, you learn how electrons flow around and between molecules, and you draw little curved arrows showing where they go. This “arrow pushing� is the heart and soul of orgo. Figure 1 (pictured above left) shows the arrow pushing mechanism for a simple reaction, adding acidified water (H3O+) to a carbon molecule called an alkene (don’t worry, this is all the orgo you’ll have to learn).
Learning how to interpret the hieroglyphics is pretty easy. The hard part is learning where to draw the little arrows. To do this, you learn rules about how molecules behave. For instance, in the third step of the drawing above, you can see an arrow pointing from the “O� (oxygen) of OH2 to a plus sign (a positive charge). This means oxygen is donating electrons to a positively charged carbon atom. After you draw oxygen donating electrons to a positive carbon a zillion times, it becomes second nature. An arrow pointing from a plus sign toward oxygen then seems viscerally wrong, like ketchup on sushi.
But the rules have many, many exceptions, which students find maddening. The same molecule will behave differently in acid or base, in dark or sunlight, in heat or cold, or if you sprinkle magic orgo dust on it and turn around three times. You can’t memorize all the possible answers — you have to rely on intuition, generalizing from specific examples. This skill, far more than the details of every reaction, may actually be useful for medicine.
“It seems a lot like diagnosis,� said Logan McCarty, Harvard’s director of physical sciences education, who taught the second semester. “That cognitive skill — inductive generalization from specific cases to something you’ve never seen before — that’s something you learn in orgo.�
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