Overview
Chem 2OB3 is a continuation of Chem 2OA3 and covers organic synthesis, reactions and mechanisms involving alcohols, aromatic compounds, aldehydes, ketones, carboxylic acids (and their derivatives), amines and...

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Originally Posted by nerual

It's not explicitly tested, but it is tested along with 2OB3 stuff...like, if you have a synthesis question, some steps might involve things from 2OA3. 2OA3 is a prereq for a reason. You can still do reasonably well on the assignments, since you can look up anything from 2OA3 that you forget, but it will likely hurt you on the exam (although not so much on the midterm, I found).

So what sorts of things would you recommend reviewing from 2OA3? Like reaction mechanisms/reagents, presumably? Anything else?

Originally Posted by SciMania

So what sorts of things would you recommend reviewing from 2OA3? Like reaction mechanisms/reagents, presumably? Anything else?

Everything...

Originally Posted by SciMania

So what sorts of things would you recommend reviewing from 2OA3? Like reaction mechanisms/reagents, presumably? Anything else?

Well I would say, you should be comfortable with chirality already, along with all the other 'fundamentals' - if not, you should brush up on those.

After that, the main thing is the mechanisms/reactions - sometimes you need to use these to solve a synthesis or something, so knowing them will help you out on those types of questions.

Knowing the mechanisms from 2oa3 also seems helpful for 2ob3, because a lot of the ideas in 2ob3 are just extensions of 2oa3 mechanisms that "make sense".

I took this course from Jan-April in 2011, and it was probably one of my favourite courses. Dr Capretta was awesome, and I thought the course wasn't too hard this year for whatever reason.

Capretta doesn't really put too many difficult questions on the midterms, the exam was hard but not impossible.

Just practice, go to tutorials even though they won't help you extremely, and you should be able to get a 12.

You cover a crapload more reactions than you do in orgo 1 (maybe 4-5x more) but they're not totally different, most of them use the same type of chemistry as each other so you won't really have to memorize anything, you can just figure them out as you go along which helps when, on the exam, you see things you've never seen before.

Does anyone have any feedback on Dr. Harrison? He is teaching the summer term of 2012!

I actually loved this course although I hated 2OA3 with Harrison. I found the labs to be better than the 2OA3 labs and the content to be much more interesting. I also did horrible in 2OA3 but amazing in 2OB3 so if you don't do well in 2OA3 you can still do well in 2OB3.

Does anybody know approximately what day/week they took the midterm in the summer?? I'm seeing if i can go to an event on the 18th of july but the course starts on june 22, so idk if the midterm will be before or after that day

Took it summer 2017 with Spencer Knight. He's pretty chill, and is really transparent about what he expects of you. Best tips I can give lol: do as many past midterms and exams he's written and posted, he repeats the exact same type of formats and whole questions too, do the tutorial questions ahead of time and attend every week so you stay on track, and ignore the textbook (was Klein 2nd ed for us) for the most part, or read it for clarification but note clearly when he says that he disagrees with it (he disagrees with it on some occasions, and several times I've read in the textbook and forgotten what he said, and gotten really confused). Also, the textbook questions are not very useful, even he states this, tutorial questions and past tests are much more reflective of what you'll see on ur test/exam).

I felt he went easier on the class as no big question on the midterm or exam were completely new things we've never seen before, if you just study and recall all the lecture slides, it's not anything new. Only exception was when he had those 'choose 10 of the 14 reactions shown and give the products' questions, he'd have a few weird products forming, but again you only have to draw 10 of 14. Also, this year he didn't test us at all on spectroscopy, except for on the assignment because we had plenty of time to solve the structure from a proton and carbon NMR at home (but again, you can easily get help/answers from other people on that). Most importantly, just review your notes several times before the next lecture, it's the only way to really get all these concepts and reactions in your head until its easy no brainer instincts. The average for the class was still 50-60, so I suppose some people can and others just simply can't understand orgo, but again I highly suspect those people just didn't review their notes enough times, which is why it's a great idea to take this course in the summer, you have double the time as in the school year to study (you only have class 2 days a week, and the rest to study, and even then I still took whole days off a week to actually do vacation things). Highly recommend it, I took 2OA3 in the fall term then 2OB3 in the summer afterwards.