Previous research has demonstrated that students struggle with the curved arrow electron-pushing formalism (EPF) used by organic chemists. Faculty have identified understanding of nucleophiles and electrophiles as one of several conceptual prerequisites necessary for students to attain fluency in the EPF. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with students enrolled in both first- and second-semester organic chemistry. In these interviews, students were asked to provide an example of a nucleophile and of an electrophile, among other tasks. Analysis of their examples suggested three categories: isolated examples (in which a molecule or ion was provided without the context of a reaction), examples within one reaction (specifying a reaction between a nucleophile and an electrophile), and examples across different reactions (each species was given in the context of a reaction, but the example nucleophile and electrophile did not react with each other). This talk will present our findings, including how students’ examples and understandings were or were not consistent between organic chemistry I and organic chemistry II students.

Analysis of first- and second-semester organic chemistry students’ examples of nucleophiles and electrophiles

251st National Meeting (2016)

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