October 2, 2016

Organic chemistry is just the study of carbon atoms that are bound to other carbon atoms, hydrogen atoms and/or possibly other elements in the periodic table (like bromine or oxygen). Carbon combines with other elements to form a mind-boggling number of compounds. Approximately 85% of all known compounds are organic, meaning that they contain carbon; the rest are considered inorganic. Organic chemistry has long been the thorn in the side of those desiring a medical career or one in biochemical research, a cruel hazing ritual that results in dashed dreams and more business majors. The name itself is an anachronism, dating back to a time when chemists thought that substances from living things, or organisms, had a vital life force that differentiated them from stuff like rocks or salt. It sounds plausible to me. Trees are different from doorknobs, glass and starfish seem to have little in common. Then in 1828 Friedrich Wöhler made urea, an organic compound, by heating ammonium chloride and silver cyanate—two inorganic compounds. I would like to have seen his face when he worked out what he had discovered. After his findings were accepted in the scientific community, organic no longer meant vital force and just meant compounds containing carbon.

So why is it considered such a nightmare? Little or no math is involved, so not having calculus is not a barrier to understanding. I think it has to do with learning abstract concepts and then applying them to gajillions of different reactions. You can’t memorize your way through the class, you have to understand each step of a chemical reaction. And the fact that everything is in tiny 3-D. Sometimes I want to say, yeah, whatever, it’s magic and the world is flat. I told one of my lindy hop acquaintances, a PhD in physics, what I was studying and he shuddered. He said he disliked chemistry entirely and it bummed him out even to think of it. That cheered me up considerably.

Luckily, I have a tutor. His name is Dave and we are mercifully electronically compatible. The first person I approached for help would take days to get back to me, which is irritating. When I am burning with a thirst for knowledge, I don’t want to wait around, so I went on-line and found a nice girl with lots of o chem tutoring experience. She couldn’t do it, and I got Dave instead. Dave is seemingly always thinking about chemistry and is always ready with an explanation. He’s even texted me pictures of solutions drawn on napkins, which I find totally endearing. He’s also sent pictures of his kittens, and advises shots of bourbon when I’ve been at it too long.

Yesterday, my younger son returned from a weeklong school trip to a farm with a tale of cannibal chickens. The farm’s owners had to leave town and left some farm sitters to watch over operations. The owners left instructions to recycle eggshells by putting the shells into the chicken feed. The chickens happily ate the shells, but when the owners returned, they were horrified to see the chickens had started to eat their own eggs. They tried making a contraption in the hen house so the eggs would roll away from the chickens immediately after laying. But the chickens had started surreptitiously laying eggs around the yard in order to eat them. Sadly, the owners had neglected to tell the sitters to grind up the eggshells first, so they fed the chickens big shell fragments. The little buggers had developed a taste for the fragments and ended up eating their young. The owners said they had to get a new batch of chickens and that the cannibal chickens would end up as enchiladas. My son thinks this is proof that the world is a dark and vicious place.