In this video, we learn about atoms and their subatomic particles - protons, neutrons, and electrons. We also explore how these particles combine to form different elements and how the periodic table is structured. The video provides a...

We've seen organometallic reagents featuring magnesium, as well as lithium, so how about copper? These are called organocuprates, or sometimes Gilman reagents. What do they look like? How do we make them? What do we do? Let's take a look!

Upon viewing the Exploring the Building Blocks of Matter video series, students will be able to do the following: Understand that the quest to better understand the building blocks of matter has transpired over the past several thousand...

Professor Dave explains the science and theory behind pericyclic reactions (Part Two)

We've mentioned heterocycles before. They are cyclic molecules where one or more atoms in the ring are not carbon. Typically these involve oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur. But there are so many different heterocycles. Different sizes, some...

Once again, we will be interested in learning about reactions that break carbon-carbon bonds, as this will allow us to perform necessary transformations on substrates. The haloform reaction is one such reaction, and it is commonly used...

In the previous tutorial we learned about carbenes. So now that we understand their properties, we are ready to learn about what we can do with them. Three major uses of carbenes involve cyclopropanation, C-H insertion, and the...

Professor Dave explains the science and theory behind pericyclic reactions (Part Four)

This program makes the Modern Periodic Table come alive to students. Numerous real-life examples of elements are exemplified in the table. Animations and graphics illustrate concepts not easily achieved through other instructional...

Have you ever had a ketone and wished you had an amide instead? Not to worry! The Beckmann rearrangement is the solution to your problems. Check out this nifty reaction where we get an oxime and then get an alkyl group to migrate. We can...

In learning about carbenes, we discovered the importance of diazomethane. So it will be a good idea to learn how to make this molecule, as well as some other things we can do with it, including something called the Arndt-Eistert...

We just learned how to make lactams out of cyclic ketones, is there a similar way that we can make lactones? There is! Try the Baeyer-Villiger oxidation. This is another one of those rearrangement type of reactions, only this time we are...

How to Determine Reactiveness/Lability of a Metal

NOTE: animation error at 2:40 - the periodic table is supposed to be twisted clockwise, and not like it is shown in the video. The twisting enables the element Cs to appear on the extreme left and the element F to appear on the right. In...

In the previous tutorial, we learned about some five-membered aromatic heterocycles. Those were furan, thiophene, and pyrrole. Now let's learn about a six-membered one, pyridine. This one is ubiquitous in nature, so let's get the scoop...

Professor Dave explains the science and theory behind pericyclic reactions (Part Three)

Now that we've covered some basics regarding drug nomenclature, drug administration, and the ways they move through and interact with the body, it's time to dive into a survey of specific drugs so we can learn about as many as we can....

A conversation with and Marianne Sowa, branch chief of the Space Biosciences Research branch at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, and Jack Miller, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, about radiation science using GeneLab.

We've learned about stereochemistry and also how to assign absolute configuration (R/S) to stereocenters using the Cahn-Ingold-Prelog convention. But some students are forced to learn all of this on dreaded Fischer projections. These are...

Basics of Electrostatics of Biochemistry

This video provides an overview of the structure and notation of atoms, including the positively charged nucleus, negatively charged electrons, protons, neutrons, and the arrangement of electrons in energy levels. It also explains how to...

Hydrohalogenation: Theory, Mechanism, Examples

Many organic chemistry students think that specificity and selectivity are essentially synonymous when describing the potential products of a chemical reaction. But this is not true! They have separate meanings and imply different...

Learn the basics about shielding as a part of the atomic structure, within the overall properties of matter topic.