Give me a C! Two for One and Two for All!

The MePB of organic Chemistry was today, and boy, what a day. Even though we learned about most of these complex carbon compounds, functional groups, etc, before, it seemed so complicated all of a sudden. But the organic chemistry kits really helped us to "visualize the compounds, not just see lewis structures, and we could see how the carbons weren't actually lined up, but zig-zagged in a sort of way," like one Chemistry student replied.

So here's the general idea of organic chemistry, which is also the largest and most organized branch of chemistry. Carbon, because of its ability to make 4 strong bonds, is the underlying structure and foundation of most compounds. Hydrocarbons are the simplest examples. We reviewed the first 10 hydrocarbons in class again: methane, ethane, propane, butane, pentane, hexane, heptane, octane, nonane, and decane. But before, we had only gone as far as drawing their Lewis structures and their 3-D models. Now we got to actually make the compounds using organic chemistry kits. Through these kits, we learned about structural isomers, compounds with the same formula but different arrangments of atoms and thus different properties. We learned how to name each of the compounds that we made and even listed all 18 isomers of octane. The next day, we advanced even farther by making alcohols and ethers, which is a combination of 2 alcohol groups.But what I enjoyed most out of these couple of days spent on Organic Chemistry was the Extreme Oreo Makeover Video. This video created by '09 alumni featured a film on the history of oreos. When it was first invented in February 1912, everybody loved to eat oreos because then, people believed that trans fat was healthier than saturated fat. After 1944, trans fat was discovered to be bad for the human body, even though it increases shelf life and flavor stability. Eventually, the oreo had to go through an extreme oreo makeover. Overall, this video was very amusing and fun to watch, and even though it may seem like an old film created simply for entertainment, "it really did teach us about many different aspects of nutrtion."