burnt toast

burnt toast, graphite, diamonds, buckyballs and the relatively recently discovered nanotubes all have one thing in common....they are made up of carbon atoms.  

Organic Chemistry is the study of carbon compounds.  There are are close to 10 million carbon compounds, they make up 99% of all of known compounds, so, organic chemistry is pretty important, now that's an understatement!

This video from NOVA and adapted by Teachers Domain gives a lovely intro to carbon before getting our teeth into the nitty, gritty stuff.

More often than not I find that students have real difficulties with Organic Chemistry, they "can't see the forest for the trees".  As teachers, and particularly Chemistry teachers we usually work on small sections of a topic and build on students knowledge piece by piece, a little like doing a jigsaw puzzle.  It's wonderful when that lightbulb flicks on and one day they just "get it".  However, with Organic Chemistry I have found that providing my students with an overview at the beginning of the topic helps them to see where we are going with the topic.  See below the basic organic and detailed organic overviews that I have produced, they are available to download from here but even better on completing the topic get your students to produce their own overview using Inspiration or a good ol' pen and paper.
Here's my overview of basic organic chemistry...

and an overview of more detailed AS level organic chemistry...

See below for a list, a long one...of useful organic chem resources,  most references are stated, just click on the titles to download

Fractional distillation

Cracking
Alkanes and Alkenes

Molymods are an essential tool for helping students to visualise the structure of hydrocarbons, if you don't have any, plastercine or polystyrene balls and cocktail sticks will work almost as well.  The 3D visualisation too, Chime (as mentioned on one of my previous blog posts "water hydrant") is also very useful to help students get a clear picture in their mind of what these molecules actually look like.

See below a link to a powerpoint and video on alkanes and alkenes from Continuing Chemistry by Anne Wignall and Terry Wales.  

Powerpoint on Alkanes and Alkenes which covers cracking, addition and substitution reactions by reaction with bromine water, Markovnikov's rule, formation of diols using potassium permanganate

Continuing Chemistry is designed for students sitting exams in New Zealand but without a doubt would be beneficial for those studying organic chemistry in a secondary school anywhere around the world.  This highly, highly recommended resources is so much more that just a 226 page book with CD.  Continuing Chemistry has straightforward explanations, clear examples, original questions with answers, interactive revision tasks, interactive and write on examination style questions. The Powerpoints and accompanying videos are of a consistently high quality.  Continuing Chemistry and other related resources are available to purchase here.
This book and CD are without question in my top 5 of recommended resources to Senior Chemistry students, irrespective of what country and which examination board they will be assessed under.  But, don't take my word for it, buy a copy and judge for yourself.

Use of a "double bubble" helps students to reinforce their understanding of the differences between alkanes and alkenes and their reactions.

This is a good opportunity to introduce data books to your students as they research the melting and boiling points of alkanes and alkenes before plotting a graph of the melting/boiling points in relation to the number of carbon atoms in the molecule.  Sure, they can find out the answer on google, but every chemistry student should have the experience of gripping a data book and sifting through the pages to find the information that they require and ensuring that they take the time to reading the keys for the titles of the columns correctly. The first time they do this it will seem a little daunting.

Isomers

Click here to download a pdf which summarises the different types of isomers: chain, positional, functional group, geometric and optical.

Optical isomers give you the opportunity to discuss thalidomide because it exists as two optical isomers, one of which levororatory (L) is a severe tetragen.  Caraway seeds and spearmint are made up of the same molecular structure but have quite distinct and different odours due to being optical isomers of each other. Click on the text for a good teacher explanation and student experiment info sheet

and the following 3 animations help students to grasp and understanding of polarised light and enantiomers.

Combustion of alkanes and alkenes
One can recap on the use of a bunsen with the door open (oxygen in, noisy blue flame, therefore complete combustion) and door closed (limited oxygen in, orange flame, therefore incomplete combustion) but there are far more exciting demo's available such as methane bubbles and exploding can as shown in the videos below

and students can practise balancing equations using the animations below, this is also a good opportunity to discuss the importance of using gas fuelled cookers, heaters etc in a well ventilated area with a carbon monoxide alarm at hand. First Alert Carbon Monoxide alarm

Polymers
These are great last day of term activities, make a polymer superball, make slime and the nylon rope trick and the following animations help students to visualise what's actually happening to the molecules as they form polymers

Alcohols

To introduce alcohols I usually carry out the whoosh bottle demonstration, burning money and errie green glow, they are outlined on my previous blogpost flash, bang, wow attention grabbers

By lighting a few ml's of different alcohols in a watch glass students can observe the differences between the alcohol flames undergoing complete and incomplete combusion.

Aldehydes and ketones

This giant silver mirror example of the usual Tollen test for identifying aldehydes is very spectacular, worth a try!

RSC - a giant silver mirror

Esters

Students enjoy the experiment of making esters although the smells produced range from glue to vomit smelling, not as fruity as they should be, see below a handout on making esters and an copy of "Making methyl salicylate" which is 1 activity from a booklet of 37 of high quality thinking skills activities (with answers) for Senior Chemistry students.  This is produced by McTogi, click here for an order form.
Soap
See below a good powerpoint outlining how to make soap (both in theory and practice) as well as clear diagrams on how soap works.

Real life organic chemists and their stories
Another good end of term suggestions is real life stories or real life organic chemists, the videos and additional information are from Teachers Domain

the impact of technology - nylon	synthesising a steroid	synthesising a alkaloid
fuel cells	the hydrogen car	Catherine Drennan

Finally, a couple organic chemistry beauty tips...

Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream is perfect for lips, elbows, knees.  The active ingredient is petroleum jelly aka soft paraffin (56.8%).  Petroleum jelly is a semi-solid mixture of hydrocarbons with a chain length of 25 or more carbons.  However, a tub of Vaseline will do the trick for a fraction of the price or for those health conscious ones amongst you, beeswax is a better option.

Estee Lauder has a extensive range of luxurious face creams and there are hundreds of different body moisturisers out there.  My tip, ask for a tub of Cetomactogol cream at your local pharmacy, it is a top quality moisturiser and apparently the base for many expensive face products and being available so cheaply it makes a wonderful body moisturiser too.

L'Occitane Shea Butter soap is gentle on the skin, however a soap made from glycerol aka glycerin helps the skin to retain moisture and is safe to use on eczema and the most sensitive skins.

Time to put my face mask on, feet up and relax,
Have a great week!