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posted by janrinok on Friday October 21 2016, @10:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the bacon-for-the-win dept.

Organic chemistry, a course considered intimidating by many students, desperately needs an ambassador. California Professor of the Year Neil Garg, who has been wildly successful in getting UCLA students to love organic chemistry, is more than happy to fill that role.

"The field of organic chemistry has made a tremendous mistake," Garg said, "in not showing students and the general public its importance and why they should love it — or at the very least, appreciate it."

That's why Garg cooked up BACON (Biology And Chemistry Online Notes), a set of fun and engaging online tutorials that make connections between organic chemistry and such topics as sports, health, genetics and even popular television shows. Garg's students have been eating it up, and now science educators around are using the tutorials to inspire their students as well.

"BACON makes organic chemistry less intimidating and really helps students learn chemical reactions and retain the knowledge ... while keeping the stress level down, said Michael Bailey, Jr., a UCLA senior and pre-medicine major. "The BACON tutorials completely changed my view of organic chemistry. I laughed, I cried, I learned."


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by soybp on Saturday October 22 2016, @06:28PM

    by soybp (2065) on Saturday October 22 2016, @06:28PM (#417625)

    My background is Chemical Engineering and I have remained in a university setting for analytical chemistry for 25+ years. I do computational analysis and am therefore also the 'IT guy' in most crowds. As such I can relate to the view of both chemists and computer specialists.

    One key point about the 'memorization' aspect of chemistry is that there are several levels of STEM classes such as mathematics and chemisty which are taught to varying groups. Just as one can follow the 'calculus series for non-scientists' series (this also includes Pre-Med), one can follow the 'chemistry series for non-scientists'. In both cases the 'non-scientists' version does not focus on logic and derivation from first principles, but instead uses more 'take this as a given' approaches which do not give the low-level understanding needed in my opinion to actually practice the field. As such, many introductory chemistry classes tend to be somewhat nonsensical and focused on memorization as indicated above.

    My advice to students nowadays is that the 'hardest series' of both math and chem classes are the easiest, because they focus on fundamentals and tend to build the ability to think in terms of the needed background to solve problems.

    Perhaps my intended insight is this: If you talk to those whom took the 'non scientists' version of calculus, you will find they probably do not use calculus after leaving college, and may have had a bad experience with not understanding it. However if you talk to practicing engineers/scientists (who likely took the math/chem for scientists/engineers), it is much more likely (in my experience) to find they enjoy and use what the mathematics they studied in college. In my view, this relationship also exists among those who studied chemistry in college. In my case, the extremely logical book for O-chem and excellent chem professors I had as an undergrad made it so interesting I was compelled to add chemistry to my engineering toolbox.

     

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