Unraveling Organic Chemistry: A Systematic Guide to Problem Solving

Welcome to "Unraveling Organic Chemistry, A systematic Guide to Problem Solving". In organic chemistry, students must learn the concepts and the applications (how to solve). In traditional lecturing and traditional textbooks, the main focus is at the conceptual part and little attention is given to problem solving. Instructors and authors of traditional textbooks deeply dive in explaining the theory behind a certain topic and cover all its aspects and they only devote few sentences or schemes to the application of the theory, although the main focus of the exams is on the application part. Even when the application part is covered, it only focus on a few examples which are usually not enough to ensure the mastery of students to that skill. This creates a misalignment between the instruction, practice and assessment. Students are usually expected to master problem solving skills by reading the solution manuals of their textbooks and practicing problem solving or seeking help from online resources, peers or teaching assistants. Although these are valuable resources but they lack uniformity and completeness and are usually not systematic. This book is not intended to replace traditional textbooks but rather to support them and to fill the gap in the instruction loop of organic chemistry. So, how is this book different from other books or solution manuals? The chapters in this book are arranged based on application topic rather than traditional topics that are based on functional groups or families of organic compounds. This makes it a more student friendly because all the different types of applications (questions) that are related to a certain topic will be gathered in one place. Also, this book illustrates systematic step by step strategies for solving problems rather than using different approaches and this makes it easier for students to understand and remember.