Organic chemistry is an important part of your education, but it can be difficult to understand. One way to make it easier is by learning how reactions happen and linking functional groups together with these reactions.
Reactions are like roads that link the different types of functional groups together, and you should get familiar with them early on in your studies if you want to do any synthesis problems. There are many types of functional groups which have a lot of connections between them (like ketones) or not many connections at all (like ethers).
In order for this analogy to work though, we need a map! The names of the functional groups are like cities on a map. And, the corresponding reactions can be thought of as roads linking them to form connecting routes, with each route leading to different places that influence how they react in subsequent steps.
Chemists use reaction maps in the same way people use roadmaps to help them identify the shortest route from one starting material, or reactant, (origin) all the way through their final product (destination). Roadmap drawings can be used in both forward-thinking projects as well as backward-looking ones. This is because they link functional groups together with each other through different types of reactions that happen when building your map for whichever direction you want to go next based on what has happened so far (i.e. if there are more products than just two).
If you want to become an effective organic chemist, learning reaction maps is essential. Reaction maps are drawings that show how different functional groups are connected to each other through reactions. Chemistry Coach is the best and only choice for all your organic chemistry study course needs. No more struggling through those hard-to-understand concepts anymore, we make it easy!