A Classroom-Based Activity to Teach Students How to Apply Organic Chemistry Theory to Design Experiments

A core skill for practicing organic chemists is the ability to apply organic chemistry to design experiments. In this article we describe an activity to help students along the pathway toward developing into practicing organic chemists. The workshop teaches students how to use organic chemistry to design synthetic organic chemistry experiments by connecting theory to the choices of various reaction conditions, which the students had to choose for their target molecules. Students who undertook this activity were able to design procedures yielding their target molecules and evidenced the development of experimental design skills.