On-Line Help for Organic Chemistry Students - Prof. Howard Black

    Welcome! This site has been designed for organic chemistry students in any semester (including survey courses) who are interested in additional material to help them achieve the conceptual understanding so vital to mastering this fascinating field.

     The "Specific Areas" were chosen from topics which often present a challenge, while the rest of the site is self-explanatory - the "Class Slides" and "Review/Tutorial" areas feature excellent presentations of material from other schools and professors; the two "electronic flash card" sites are not only really helpful in reaction review, but are actually fun; and the Comprehensive Sites have it all: summaries, reviews, practice questions, etc.

     This will always be a work in progress. If you know of a great site that probably should be linked here, or you find a dead link, please let me know (homepage - e-mail). Meanwhile, I hope you use this site to full advantage, and that it helps you gain the fundamental, conceptual understanding so essential to the mastering and enjoyment of organic chemistry.

    By the way, for those who might have been seeking links to aid in organic chemistry at the graduate level, I recommend taking a look at my link library for Researchers in Organic Synthesis.

Various plug-ins are required for certain animated sites:

Chime
tutorial#1
tutorial#2

Acrobat Reader

Shockwave

Flash

PowerPoint Viewer

QuickTime

RasMol
quickstart tutorial/FAQ

RealOne
(was RealPlayer)

Protein Explorer
tutorial

Two very slick sites you need to check out!

Organic Reaction Roadmap - very useful! Fnc. grp. interconversions with reagents!

Molecular Models - ~1500 Rasmol© (Chime©) models of many organic molecules.

Specific Areas

[Note - The Colby College sites are consistently terrific!]
**The really excellent ones are noted by this icon:

Nomenclature Organic Chemistry Nomenclature Tutorial Introduction to Organic Nomenclature IUPAC Official Nomenclature Rules IUPAC Glossary by Fnc. Grp. ACD/IUPAC Name Free 8.05 names compounds on-line!	Nucleophilic Substitution Reactions Substitution vs. Elimination Reactions Nucleophilic Substitution Dry Laboratory SN1 vs. SN2 - great movie Colby College
Orbitals/Resonance Orbitals - interactive movie Colby College Resonance great, detailed site from Boise State Resonance from Boise State Resonance and Resonance Forms lots of examples, problems, related areas The Orbitron visualization of all of the common A.O.s and M.O.s	Reaction Mechanisms Reaction Mechanisms at a Glance great, Flash-based tutorial that's part of Oxford's Virtual Chemistry project. Organic Reaction Mechanisms Three-Dimensional Representations of Reactions Animated Reaction Mechanism Colby College Organic Reaction Mechanism Movies "Curly Arrows" - how to draw electron arrows
Spectroscopy On-Line Tutorial from UIC Spectroscopy Learning Aids Animated Infra-Red Spectroscopy (AIRS) Basics of NMR (great - much phys. chem.) NMR Spectroscopy (more in-depth) ¹H-NMR Introduction Wake Forest NMR Spectroscopy Worcester Polytech NMR Tutorial Hartford - nice use of frames	Stereochemistry Glossary of Stereochemical Terms Chirality (good disc. plus movie) Colby College - Shockwave Animated Stereochemistry Colby College - Chime Stereochemistry Help Stereochemistry from UIC Conformation (eight movies)

Practice Problems

Practice Problems from MSU huge no. of questions, divided by topic, color-coded for difficulty.	Practice Problems from Boise State 20 question sets, sorted by fnc. grp. or spectroscopy method (NMR, IR, etc.).
More Practice Problems from MSU not as well indexed as above, but uses great Quicktime movies throughout.	More Practice Problems from Boise State more advanced question sets, grouped by reaction type.
Multiple Choice Problems #1 over 50 random questions - excellent review.	Multiple Choice Problems #2 another 54 random questions - excellent review.
Synthesis Problems not overly challenging; a great way to start developing a feel for synthesis	Aromatic Synthesis Calculator great way to reinforace and practice electrophilic aromatic substitution

Quizzes/Exams

Test Bank from UCLA (Dr. B. Luceigh) four different organic courses - exams, mid-terms, finals - blank exams and answers in separate files - really good review. Since these courses are numbered, here are UCLA chemistry course descriptions

ConcepTests began at Univ. of Wisconsin; continued at other schools. A series of short tests on numerous concepts for most chemistry subdisciplines, meant to augment other classroom materials. This page is from the Journal of Chemical Education.

Organic Chemistry Topics

Topic Index for Individual ConcepTests each topic has between one and nearly 20 tests

Organic Chemistry I used at Portland State University

Organic Chemistry II used at Portland State University

Organic Chemistry III used at Portland State Universit

Collections of Class Slides/Files

Arizona State University this site for Org. Chem. I features lecture notes, quizzes, problem sets, old exams, and much additional great stuff.
Columbia University Based on Carey, 5th Ed. (Table of Contents)
Western Washington Univ. complete resource pages for Pavia's Org. Chem. 1 , 2, and 3 with superb PowerPoint slide shows
Harvard University the web site for Prof. Andy Myers' undergrad. course called "Advanced Organic Chemistry: Synthesis of Complex Molecules". This is a series of excellent PDF pages about many reactions and reagents; each one of the ~30 handouts is 8-20 pages long.

The following course home pages for chemistry classes at MIT include a syllabus, assignments, exams, lecture handouts, quizzes, and occasional other materials:

Organic Chemistry I (Spring 2003)

Organic Chemistry I (Spring 2005)

Organic Chemistry II (Spring 2003)

Organic Chemistry II (Fall 2003)

Organic Chemistry II (Fall 2006)

Advanced Org. Chem. (Spring 2007)

UCLA Prof. Steve Hardinger's great site for undergrad. organic chemistry; includes a lot of great material like old exams,quizzes, lecture notes, etc.
Penn State the web site for Organic Chemistry, featuring all of the good things - exams, quizzes, handouts, etc.
Oxford University Mechanisms of Organometallic Reactions and Homogenous Catalysis. An excellent course site, featuring course info, online exams, online tutorials; even a course discussion
Bryn Mawr College Advanced Organic Chemistry: Synthesis. This site contains mainly the things students want the most: the old problem sets, semester exams, and finals. Oh yes - the answers, too. ;-)

Review/Tutorial/Comprehensive Sites

On-Line "Flash Cards"

Organic WebCards from Colby; extremely versatile! Choose which part of rxns. (SM, reagent(s), pdts.) you need to supply; can also choose comprehensive review of all fnc. grps.
Electronic Flash Cards from OSU - excellent! Select from ca. 20 fnc. grps., then predict product(s). Order of cards is shuffled each time the page is relaoded
Reaction Flash Cards a Fox & Whitesell project, similar to the OSU set, but incomplete as far as number of chapters covered.

Tutorials

Additional Organic Chemistry Reading from the Web finding specific topics in this large selection of web sites is easy, since they're correlated with topics found in most organic texts.
Interactive Tutorials from Boise State Univ. comprehensive, excellent site; several components are on this page.
Kinetic versus Thermodynamic Reaction Control Tutorial four modules plus a summary - extraordinary
Organic Chemistry Tutorials Prof. Steve Hardinger (UCLA)
University of Southern Maine huge, well-indexed tutorial site
Online Learning Center great tutorial keyed to Carey's text. Uses Chime throughout to illustrate mechanisms, structures, etc. Very nice.
Organic Chemistry Online from Univ. of Illinois-Chicago, a super tutorial site whose areas are Library, Structure& Bonding, Spectroscopy, Stereochemistry, and Functional Group Reactions.
Organic Chemistry: Functional Groups a cool tutorial from Purdue; reads like a good organic text, but uses frames to aid navigation
Organic Chemistry: Organic Reactions in the same series as avove. Really excellent.

Comprehensive Sites

Organic Chemistry Home Page from Towson Univ uses McMurry - Quiz/exam keys, rxn. summaries, syllbi for lectures and labs, great "enrichment materials" (like my "Special Sections", more - super!
Educational Materials for Organic Chemistry from Mich. State (Dr. Abby Parrill) practice problems, special pages (animations, conformations, computers in drug design, etc.), organic chem. course home pages,...really excellent!
Organic Chemistry On-Line Tutorial Version 1.0 (UIC) reviews, tutorials on structure/bonding, spectroscopy, stereochemistry, and fnc. grp. reactions...wonderful!
a superlative review site, organized specifically for those with the MCAT in your future
Intute - Best of the Web a super list of on-line resources for organic chemistry. Well-edited; I could find no nonexistent or even lousy sites of the 135 the comprise the list!
Organic Chemistry Resources Worldwide one of the most venerable organic sites on the web; its resources are too numerous to list here - just check it out, and I guarantee you'll find what you need
Organic Chemistry Help Page from Purdue University, featuring sections on topic review, problem solving, reaction mechanisms, molecular modeling, etc.
The Organic Chemistry Review a visually great and very well conceived site covering all of org. chem. It has a relaxed feel and is fun to explore!
The Organic Chemistry Toolkit a nice, well-indexed listing of external web sites, including many that I didn't include here.
Organic Chemistry Review Sheet a well coordinated set of pages that help the student review all of organic chemistry
Chemistry Resources: Topics: Organic Chemistry part of a hierarchy of review sites; this is mainly a list of links, but each one is explained so you know what they're about
BUBL LINK: Organic Chemistry if you've never heard of BUBL, check this out! It's one of the biggest directories on the internet, served from Strathclyde University in Scotland.

Molecular Modeling

List of Modeling Software large, accurate listing of software used for molecular modeling applications
Molecular Models For Organic Lectures from Imperial College, London, a super organic university. Nearly 30 model-involved instructional units on topics like cyclohexane conformers, biomimetic pericyclic reactions, models for sigmatropic rearrangements, etc.
Chemical Information Laboratory Cambridge Univ.
Chemical Calculations a subset of the above
Computers in Drug Design somewhat dated but still very illustrative of how computers revolutionalized drug chemistry

Online Organic Chemistry Textbooks
Virtual Text of Organic Chemistry by Prof. William Reusch (then at Mich. State). It's the gold standard for online texts; every part of the project was carefully planned and meticulously executed. There's lots of animated graphics, hyperlinks around the web, and many other great touches.
Virtual Chembook by Prof. Charles Ophardt of Elhurst College covers both general and organic chemistry, with many ancillary topics also included
General, Organic and Biochemistry very good, wide-ranging textbook with excellent indexing; applicable to both freshman and organic chemistry, also has much biochemical and medical applications