3 Fragments and Functional Groups

A book of problems (answers on www.byinquisition.org) designed to help organic chemistry students to: (i) draw functional groups showing the bonds when none are given; (ii) learn names of functional groups; and, (iii) learn abbreviations for fragments and the difference between a functional group and a fragment. It is important to learn names of common functional groups and fragments early in organic chemistry, otherwise when a lecturer or text refers to them, students have to look up what they are to understand, or go on not understanding. It is a huge advantage to learn them because they come up repetitively: students who do this early get ahead, others fall behind. Sooner or later introductory organic chemistry students must learn functional groups to pass. It is not so hard. Like when dentists tells patients to expect "minor discomfort"; they mean "it is going to hurt a bit, but not as much as if you did not get this fixed". This section is to make the process as pain-free as possible. For instance, functional groups can be learned relatively quickly via problems to figure out structures from letter representations (eg structure of -COOH) from what was already learned in this series about valency and hydridization.