A Guide to Organic Chemistry Mechanisms, eBook version

A Guide to Organic Chemistry Mechanisms is a new reaction mechanism workbook designed to accompany a standard organic chemistry textbook. This book uses example based teaching. It is self-guiding, you can learn reaction mechanisms without additional help. The book presents reaction mechanisms at three levels of difficulty: basic, intermediate, and advanced. You complete the missing information. In Part A, the easiest, the (easy to follow) curved arrows are missing. In Part B, the same problem is repeated with every other intermediate or product missing. In Part C, the problems are written in textbook fashion, and the same number of reaction arrows have been retained. Thus, you are guided from learning the logic of a reaction to writing a complete mechanism. Once you have mastered a mechanism, you should be able to solve similar problems in your textbook. Part D gives completed mechanisms. The book uses our ability to recognize and learn patterns. Therefore, an emphasis has been placed upon teaching the patterns of reactions. It is those patterns that are used to solve new problems. The book helped us increase our class averages on the American Chemical Society's Standard Examination in Organic Chemistry by up to twenty percentile points.