ESSENTIALS OF ORGANIC CHEMISTRY

We frequently hear the term organic in everyday language where it describes or refers to substances that are natural. This is probably a result of the notion of early scientists that all organic compounds came from living systems and possessed a vital force. However chemists learned over 170 years ago that this is not the case. Organic compounds are major components of living systems but chemists can make many of them in the laboratory from substances that have no direct connection with living systems. Chemically speaking a pure sample of an organic compound such as Vitamin C prepared in a laboratory is chemically identical to a pure sample of Vitamin C isolated from a natural source such as an orange or other citrus fruit. This book consists of a variety of discrete topics usually divided into separate chapters as textbook. In contrast your organic chemistry instructors will present a course in which each new topic uses information from previous topics to raise your understanding of organic chemistry to successively higher levels.