CHEM 741 - Physical Organic Chemistry I - Fall 2009
Class Hours & Details || Exams || Grading for the Course || Text books and Supplementary materials || Course goals || Course overview || Standard Course Policies || Syllabus outline (Week by week)
Lectures ||
Class problems, Assignments and Exams (PDF files) || Class syllabus - PDF
Room: |
152 DUNBAR Hall |
| Class time : | Mondays: 3-3.50 PM Tuesdays and Thursdays: 2-3.15 PM |
| Office Hours: | Open. It is adviced to e-mail me in advance. |
Exam 1 |
Thursday, October 8, 2009, 2.00 PM - 4.00 PM |
Exam 2 |
Thursday November 19, 2009, 2.00 PM - 4.00 PM |
| Final Exam | Tuesday, December 15, 2009. 10.00 AM - 1.00 PM |
Grading for the courses :
- Two term-time exams (25% each).
- Final exam (35%).
- Assignments – two assignments will be given (total of 15%).
- Homework problems will not be graded or collected, but will provide the background for tests and serve to stimulate student-led discussion in the classroom.
- The grades will not be determined based on statistics (curve), given the limited sampling pool. Instead, grades will be assigned based on the absolute total scores.
- Attendance – Mandatory.
Text books and Supplementary materials:
Text book:
- Modern Physical Organic Chemistry, by Anslyn and Dougherty. The books will be available at the bookstore. Required reading assignments will be given during the lecture.
Supplementary READING materials: (will be available in the Library).
- Carey and Sundberg’s - Advanced Organic Chemistry, part A, and the 5th edition
- Ernst L. Eliel -Stereochemistry of carbon compounds.
- March, Advanced Organic Chemistry, 4th ed. or 5th ed.
- Carpenter, Determination of Organic Reaction Mechanisms.
Provide you with a set of tools / principles to rationalize, control, and predict the behavior and outcome of organic reactions.
CHEM 741 is intended to be an overview of aspects of physical organic chemistry – understanding the nature of organic reactions and mechanisms. This course will not focus on memorizing organic reactions and mechanisms, but will concentrate instead on using physical organic techniques to come up with viable mechanisms, solve mechanistic problems, and rationalize outcomes of organic reactions. Many of the reactions covered in this course will not be new to many of you. However, we will be looking how they function in more detail to gain a better understanding of physical organic principles and how they can be used in a practical sense.
The intent of CHEM 741 is to provide new organic graduate students with all the fundamental tools and concepts for understanding advanced organic chemistry.
The first aspect of CHEM 741 will review basic principles for qualitiatively analyzing and writing organic reaction mechanisms. Also in this section, useful qualitiative relationships in physical organic chemistry will be presented and examined. A systematic approach to provide some ground rules for formulating plausible mechanisms, which is a critical component of advanced organic chemistry.
The second aspect of the course will be devoted to examining how qualitiative aspects of physical organic chemistry such as steric effects, stereoelectronic effects, conformation analysis, orbital symmetry, etc. can be used to rationalize the outcomes of organic reactions. In addition to overviews of these areas, we will be looking at specific examples of organic transformations where these principles apply in practice.The third aspect of the course will concentrate on understanding and applying methods for the experimental determination of organic reaction mechanisms. This will concentrate on the "physical" part of physical organic chemistry. That is, equation solving, kinetic and thermodynamic analyses; and data interpretation. A good calculator is recommended for this section of the course.
(1) Examinable material: Students will only be responsible for knowing the material covered in the lectures, suggested study problems, and any handouts. The assigned reading sections in the textbook and supplementary textbooks are to be used to supplement the information provided in class.
(2) Requests for special exam writing conditions: Requests for special exam writing conditions (e.g., separate room, extra time) will be accommodated as long as formal documentation from the Disability Services Office is received. No other office on campus is authorized to validate a disability.
(3) Late problem sets, missed exams, and extenuating circumstances: Late problem set solutions will be penalized 20% for each day late. Late problem sets will not be accepted once the answer key has been posted. Any person who does not had in a problem set or misses the midterm exam will automatically be given a zero for the assignment or midterm exam. Any person who misses the final exam without a documented, valid reason will automatically be given an F for the class. Students who are passing the course and miss the final exam for reason of documented illness or similar catastrophe will be given an Incomplete.
(4) Cheating: Any student caught cheating, or helping someone cheat, will be reported to the NDSU Honor Code Council and to the Department of Chemistry and Molecular Biology for punitive action, as described below. Plagiarism also constitutes as cheating in this course. Any discovered act of academic dishonesty by a student in this course will be reported to the NDSU Honor Code Council. Additionally, the incident will be reported to the Academic Ethics Committee of the Department of Chemistry and Molecular Biology. This Committee will recommend if a sanction should be applied to the student. It is expected that students will abide by the NDSU Honor Code for all exams and problem sets. For problem sets, students must work independently on their solutions. Students must abide by the NDSU Honor Code for the problem sets in that they are not allowed to simply copy solutions and answers from each other.
Syllabus Outline (Week by week):
Note: This outline below is to guide through the way the class will be conducted week by week. We will try to follow the schedule although some deviation is expected. [ PDF of class syllabus ]
Class dates |
Topics covered |
|
[Aug 25] |
Chapter 1 |
Over view of basic concepts, Molecular Structure, VB & MO theory (First 20-30 min) |
[Aug 27, 31] |
Chapter 2 |
Strain and Stability; Thermochemistrry; Structure and kinetics; Conformation analysis; Electronic effects; |
[Sep 15, 17 and 22] |
Chapter 3 |
Solutions and Non-Covalent Binding Forces |
[Sep 24, 28 and 29] |
Chapter 5 |
Acid-Base Chemistry |
[Oct 1, 5 and 6 ] |
Chapter 6 |
Stereochemistry |
[Oct 6] |
Chapter 6 |
Stereochemistry, Problem session, Review of topics. |
[Oct 8] |
EXAM 1 |
Chapters 2, 3 and 5 |
[Oct 12, 13, and 15] |
Chapter 6 |
Stereochemistry |
[Oct 19, 20, 22, 26 and 27] |
Chapter 7 |
Reactivity, Kinetics and Mechanism. |
[Oct 29, 30; Nov 2, 3 and 5] |
Chapter 8 |
Experiments related to Thermodynamics and Kinetics |
[Nov 9, 10 , 12 and 16] |
Chapter 9 |
Catalysis, Problem session, Review of topics. |
[Nov 17] |
Chapter 10 |
Organic reaction mechanisms (Addition and/ or eliminations) and Problem session, Review of topics. |
[Nov 19] |
EXAM 2 |
Chapters 6, 7, 8 and 9 |
[Nov 23, 24, and 30 and Dec 1] |
Chapter 10 Contd… |
Organic reaction mechanisms (Addition and/ or eliminations) |
[Dec 3, 7, 8 and 10] |
Chapter 11 |
Organic reaction mechanisms (Substitutions, isomerization and rearrangements) |
[Dec 11] |
Review |
Problem session, Review of topics |
[Dec 16] |
Final EXAM |
Covered from day 1 to last day in class. |
Sep 7: No class (Labor Day, University Holiday)
Sep 21: No class (has to be made up depending on the class availability)
Nov 11: Veterans Day, University Holiday
Nov 26: No class (Thanksgiving, University Holiday)