Sciencemadness Discussion Board

How to start organic chemistry?

Draeger - 23-7-2020 at 17:07

I want to really start doing organic chemistry, but I am not really sure what the simplest things to do are. I can easily teach myself, but I don't know what to synthesize. I don't just want to haphazardly do anything like just making Grignard reactions and then suddenly doing an esterification. I want to have some sort of order.

Does anyone have an idea?

Cou - 23-7-2020 at 19:18

Fischer esterification is a good start. One of the easiest organic reactions. You can buy cheap glacial acetic acid and sulfuric acid from www.dudadiesel.com, and an assortment of alcohols and carboxylic acids from www.consolidated-chemical.com or by searching ebay and amazon.

isopentyl acetate is a fun one. It smells like bananas. you can get acetic acid from www.dudadiesel.com, and isopentyl alcohol (called isoamyl alcohol on the site) from www.consolidated-chemical.com

After mastering fischer esterification, I am slowly branching out to other organic reactions, such as using hydrobromic acid to convert alcohols to alkyl bromides, and using those alkyl bromides for grignard reactions.

Esters and alcohol synthesis is fun b/c of the smells. There are thousands of possibilities with isomers.

[Edited on 7-24-2020 by Cou]

Tsjerk - 24-7-2020 at 02:13

Maybe isolate some aspirin, deactylate it and do an esterfication with methanol? While at it you can make some iron(III) solution to play around with to see where there is and where there isn't salicylic acid in the process.

CharlieA - 24-7-2020 at 15:34

Maybe you could consult a first-year organic chemistry laboratory manual for ideas, and to give you some ideas for a program to follow.

Amos - 25-7-2020 at 05:18

There's lots of simple stuff you can begin to do just for the practical experience, even if it doesn't always lead to a product you necessarily appreciate on its own. You can:

-Buy some aliphatic or aromatic feedstocks to bulk up on building blocks (toluene, a benzoate salt for making benzene, simple straight chain alcohols, aspirin, vanillin, if you want to get creative perhaps benzyl alcohol and some amino acids)
-Try oxidizing an alcohol to an aldehyde, ketone, or carboxylic acid. There are lots of ways to do this depending on your substrate and what you have available.
-Esterify your favorite alcohol or carboxylic acid a la Fischer. This is especially rewarding if you can prepare salicylic, cinnamic or anthranilic acid, or another precursor to the really great smelling ones.
-Try steam-distilling or soxhlet extracting some plant matter or even a dried spice or herb in bulk to prepare some essential oils. Some of these can even be processed into pure compounds for your experimentation (eugenol from cloves, cinnamaldehyde/cinnamic acid from cinnamon oil, etc.).
-Perform an aromatic substitution, the easiest of which would probably be nitration. Start small with exothermic reactions like the one I just mentioned.
-Prepare a dye! Red and yellow azo dyes are painfully simple, anthraquinones are accessible if you've got phthalic anhydride, and phenolphthalein is always a classic for the budding organic chemist.
-Prepare an alkyl halide (time to get yourself some sodium bromide if you haven't) and substitute the halide for another group. Maybe even a Grignard if you're feeling frisky.

Draeger - 25-7-2020 at 05:58

Quote: Originally posted by Amos  
There's lots of simple stuff you can begin to do just for the practical experience, even if it doesn't always lead to a product you necessarily appreciate on its own. You can:

-Buy some aliphatic or aromatic feedstocks to bulk up on building blocks (toluene, a benzoate salt for making benzene, simple straight chain alcohols, aspirin, vanillin, if you want to get creative perhaps benzyl alcohol and some amino acids)
-Try oxidizing an alcohol to an aldehyde, ketone, or carboxylic acid. There are lots of ways to do this depending on your substrate and what you have available.
-Esterify your favorite alcohol or carboxylic acid a la Fischer. This is especially rewarding if you can prepare salicylic, cinnamic or anthranilic acid, or another precursor to the really great smelling ones.
-Try steam-distilling or soxhlet extracting some plant matter or even a dried spice or herb in bulk to prepare some essential oils. Some of these can even be processed into pure compounds for your experimentation (eugenol from cloves, cinnamaldehyde/cinnamic acid from cinnamon oil, etc.).
-Perform an aromatic substitution, the easiest of which would probably be nitration. Start small with exothermic reactions like the one I just mentioned.
-Prepare a dye! Red and yellow azo dyes are painfully simple, anthraquinones are accessible if you've got phthalic anhydride, and phenolphthalein is always a classic for the budding organic chemist.
-Prepare an alkyl halide (time to get yourself some sodium bromide if you haven't) and substitute the halide for another group. Maybe even a Grignard if you're feeling frisky.

Thank you.

Syn the Sizer - 25-7-2020 at 08:47

I was given this suggestion a while back and it helped me a lot. Checkout some ChemPlayer on BitChute.

https://www.bitchute.com/channel/2vWmMgSEZ2jf/

Some good reagents to have on have are, urea, phthalic anhydride, common acids, you could get some sodium or potassium sorbate, solvents like acetone, xylene and alcohols. Have some drying agents like MgSO4, CaCl2 etc.

Also like CharlieA possibly check a 1st year O-Chem lab book too, I am pretty sure z-lib has a bunch free, as well as the Science Madness library has books on O-Chem with some good information. There is even a 5 book series dedicated to organic reactions.

As well many YouTubers have some fun and interesting reactions.

It is tough to decide where to start, O-Chem can be very overwhelming, specially when first starting out. I suggest finding something you are interested in and go from there. Like Cou said Fischer Esterification is a great start, it will help you build a supply of reagents and is very rewarding. As well it gives you something to show off to your friends that have pleasant smells.

My first project was extraction of piperine from black pepper using my makeshift extractor using a distilation set, a Sep funnel as the receiving flask a plug of cotton at the bottom and pepper inside. As the hot solvent dripped into the Sep funnel it ran through to a flask underneath. Sure it was labour intensive having to transfer the solution to the boiling flask periodically but seeing the crystals at the end was awesome.

Cou - 25-7-2020 at 13:22

Vogel's practical organic chemistry, 5th edition, has some good procedures for amateur labs. https://b-ok.cc/book/436741/236a18

Modern day 1st year o-chem lab books used in universities often start with more obscure chemicals that are hard to find, or they are microscale.

Syn the Sizer - 25-7-2020 at 17:38

The O-Chem lab book from my course was decent. It had good entry level reactions with easy to find reagents. Though the Authors call it A Miniscale Approach.

https://m.directtextbook.com/isbn/9780030192388

I got mine used but like new, I ripped it apart not long ago and intend to scan it but I recently moved and am not settled in yet.

Is there a prefered format when listing book or is an HTML link fine?

fdnjj6 - 30-7-2020 at 23:00

I am sort of in your boat as well. I posted something similarly in the organic chemistry section. I have been doing amateur chemistry as a hobby for a while now and so I have a decent amount of glassware and equipment.

Some of the projects I have planned are:
Making a biodiesel via a transesterification of ricinoleic acid (castor oil) and methanol.
While this reaction can be done easily in a beaker, I want to use it to test some of my new glassware that is arriving soon.

Another project is isopropyl nitrite. Beware though it is a veryyy potent vasolidator. Honesltly I wouldn't recommend this one unless you have experience.

Chlorobutanol is seemingly simple enough and something I want to make in the near future.

The current synthesis I working on was recommended to me by people in the thread I started. Benzocaine.
You can make benazocaine easily if you just buy the precursor p-aminobenzoic acid. It is sold as PABA and I think it's some additive or supplement. I'm not sure. I wanted to do a total synthesis though. Starting from bare bones.

The reaction is as follows:
toluene --> nitrotoluene --> p-nitrotoluene --> p-nitrobenzoic acid --> p-aminobenzoic acid --> ethyl p-aminobenzoate aka benzocaine

The reaction is fairly complex to me since it is my first multi step organic synthesis but it is certainly doable for a moderately equipped amateur.

I have learned a LOT so far. The only problems I am having is that the steps I have to find separately and they are hard to find at least for me. Chemplayer made benzocaine starting from toluene too but he ends up using dichromates (FUCK THAT) and a completely different reducing agent. A few of the steps I'll be doing are actually requiring me to use my brain and pull together a sort of frankenstein procedure pulling different things from different synthesis papers and videos. I think I have most of it figured out and I have started extracting the toluene from carb cleaner. I need to distill it to purify and go from there.

Eddie Current - 31-7-2020 at 04:27

Quote: Originally posted by Draeger  
How to start organic chemistry?


1) Read. Lots.
2) Don't huff sulfur dioxide.

[Edited on 31-7-2020 by Eddie Current]

Dr.Bob - 6-8-2020 at 17:36

I would look around for some older sophmore organic lab manuals, like Fiesers, Vogel, etc, maybe there is a German equivalent to them. Older ones tend to have good experiments that are simple but interesting. See if you can find other people with the same interest nearby, or maybe a small chemical company where you can do some work or intern.

Mateo_swe - 26-10-2020 at 00:49

This ebook website has a ton of chemistry books as well as books on other topics.
For guests its a 5 ebook daily download limit.
https://1lib.eu/