Students perform about eight experiments throughout the semester, most of them on an individual basis. At the conclusion of each experiment, a lab report is assigned, due the following week. These reports are often painstaking to write, but there is a lot of help available. The key to success in this class is to read the lab manual and know what is going on before doing the experiment. To encourage this, a quiz is given at the beginning of each lab period.
Lectures usually serve as a preview to the next week's lab experiment.
The use of safety glasses in the lab is mandatory. The course ends with a comprehensive exam the week before finals. It begins with a review of atomic structure and covalent bonding, and continues with a sequence of topics based on the concept of functional groups, and specific groupings of atoms which serve as the site of most organic reactions. The structure, stereochemistry, physical properties, reactivity, and synthesis of different compound classes are discussed, with emphasis on alkanes, alkenes, alkynes, aromatic compounds, alkyl halides, and alcohols. A knowledge of reaction mechanisms is stressed to provide unifying principles.