this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
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Thermal Physics was it for me. I aced every other module, but that one I had to take twice. I still have no idea what thermal physics is, and at this point I don't want to know.
at least thermodynamics follow pretty static rules, that module was only an issue for me because it was a seminar where we had to work in groups, which i suck at.
I realized that organic chenistry you have to study until you get a feeling for how charge is distributed along a molecule to identify where and how it can react with other molecules, and what intermediarys (real or imagined) are formed, which boils down to learning as many reactions as possible. it's a bit like learning a language with fucked up grammar.
i'd say it's more important to learn mechanisms because this way you can notice these patterns of reactivity easier. at some point you'd only get new reactions that are really just pieces of other reactions you know put in a new way
You're right, that's absolutely necessary to learn, to take the language metapher further it's like learning to declinate verbs. I meant it really clicked for me when i started to get a feeling for charge distribution and how electronegativity of specific ligands changes it, especially to predict what will happen in cases where more than one reaction is possible.
i always thought that the idea of synthons should be taught early on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthon
This does not ring a bell at all - It makes sense to look at it this way around, might have helped back then. But when i remember how old my professor was back then, and looking at how "new" the concept is, i'm pretty sure that he didn't think too fondly of such newfangled stuff.
It didn't help that the module had originally 5 hours per week, which was cut down to 3 hours without reducing the material to learn, resulting in a very old-timey approach to the whole module, since there wasn't much time at all. I learnt most of it audiotaping the lessons while copying what was written on the blackboard, and actually learned it at home.
Eta: I was very proud of my B+ back then, which squarely placed me in the best percentile - like i said, 2/3 were failing grades. I'm pretty sure i still can reproduce stuff like Beta-Oxidation reactions with a bit of time, and it's been 10 years since i actually used this stuff.
i don't mean beta-oxidation, it's just a series of separated normal reactions. i mean something like this: when first learning about ketones, you might learn about aldol condensation, which has enol as a nucleophile and another carbonyl as electrophile. at some other point you might learn about strecker reaction, which has iminium ion as electrophile and cyanide as nucleophile. but really, what you can do is mix and match, and you can pair enolizable ketone and iminium (mannich reaction) or carbonyl and cyanide (cyanohydrin formation) and then generalize, for example you don't need strictly ketone for mannich, you can use any electron rich conjugated system like malonate or nitroalkane anion (henry reaction) or phenol or indole. to figure this out you need to study mechanisms. these last two are usually treated as variants of friedel-crafts reaction, but really categories like this are fake
and to get that right, you need to know how these reactive intermediates look like, how reactive they are, what influences their stability which means that ochem starts with discussion of carbocations, carboanions, radicals, their shapes and orbitals involved, hyperconjugation, solvent effects and the like. and then first reactions taught are sn1/sn2, because these showcase these fundamentals nicely, and from there, it's about introduction of more compound classes
we only had synthons introduced during lecture at around 4th year, and only for ochem path, it's not doing a lot at that point and imo would have much more impact right after ochem intro course
Anything that involves statistical mechanics is just black magic. There should be a Nobel prize just for people who are able to wrap their mind around it.