How to Learn Organic Chemistry.
Draw it and Name it Systematically to Know it.
People say, “Draw it to know it”. But in organic chemistry, even better is “Draw it and name it (systematically) to know it”. It works for me.
In my experience, recalling a molecule is easy if I have once learned both to draw it and to recall the systematic IUPAC name. For example, once I learned to draw the amino acid called L-lysine, which looks like this:
and I learned the name, which is (2S)-2,6-diaminohexanoic acid, I found that recalling both the drawing and the IUPAC name fairly easy.
Recalling part of the diagram, when I couldn’t recall the whole thing immediately, or likewise part of the name, allowed me to deduce some additional part of the other form, which allowed me to recall a bit more of the latter, which then allowed me to deduce a bit more of the former, and so on, until I had reconstructed both of them in their entirety.
It’s also highly motivating, for me, to think that were I to mention lysine’s systematic name in casual conversation, the savvy interlocutor might well ask me whether I know what it means, which I could take as my cue to draw it. The name and the diagram are different ways of representing the same information.
Something awesome about it is that you don’t need to know anything beyond the name and the diagram. You don’t need to know how bonds work, for example. Sheer rote memory can suffice. So, like a foreign language, it can be taught to non-nerdy people, and even to young children, I would venture to speculate.
I expect that young children could easily master the basics of IUPAC nomenclature, and I believe it should be taught in primary school. I would further suggest that if not in primary school, then certainly in middle school, it would make sense to teach students to draw and name systematically all twenty-two amino acids. I learned to do that, recently and I’m very glad that I did.
