Free online courseOrganic Chemistry

Course Description

Organic chemistry can feel overwhelming when every topic seems to depend on ten others. This free online course is designed to help you build confidence step by step, turning the subject into a set of connected ideas you can actually use on homework, labs, and exams. Instead of memorizing reactions at random, you will train yourself to recognize patterns in structure, bonding, and electron flow so you can predict what happens and explain why.

You will start by strengthening the foundation: how bond type and polarity influence stability, how to draw and interpret Lewis and skeletal structures, and how functional groups control reactivity. From there, the course develops the skills that separate guessing from real understanding, such as formal charge, resonance, bond order, dipole moments, and acid base reasoning with pKa. As you practice, you will get better at choosing the most stable structure, ranking acidity, spotting the best nucleophile or electrophile, and seeing where electrons want to move.

Once the basics are solid, you will tackle the language of organic chemistry: naming compounds correctly, analyzing conformations, and mastering stereochemistry concepts like chirality, R and S configuration, enantiomers, diastereomers, and meso compounds. These topics often decide exam outcomes, and the course emphasizes the visual thinking needed to solve them efficiently.

Reaction mechanisms are treated as a toolkit rather than a list. You will learn how substitution and elimination pathways differ, what controls SN1 versus SN2, how E1 and E2 compete, and how solvent, leaving group ability, carbocation stability, and sterics guide your predictions. You will also work through major alkene and alkyne reactions, aromatic substitution logic, carbonyl chemistry, organometallic reactions, and multi step reasoning that appears in typical university sequences.

Finally, you will connect structures to real data using spectroscopy. By learning how IR, mass spectrometry, and NMR signals reflect functional groups and molecular environments, you will be able to identify unknowns and confirm products with greater confidence. With focused practice questions throughout, this course supports self study, exam prep, and anyone looking to make organic chemistry feel manageable and even enjoyable.