Stat therm

Last night my boyfriend asked me (he's a chemistry major, although a sophomore taking organic right now) what the reagent NBS did. I could answer him immediately and even describe the structure of the molecule and that NBS stood for "n-bromo succinamide".

Organic reagents, pKas, structures of the amino acids, NMR shifts and typical J-values, IR shifts, even some boiling points, this is all at the tip of my fingers. It's just stored in my head--anything organic or bioorganic is just there. I haven't forgotten it.

There's an incredible amount of information pertaining to organic chemistry and biochemistry that is just completely accessible in my head. I do not understand then, why it is so difficult to download thermodynamics equations in there. It's not like I enjoy memorizing pKas anymore than I enjoy memorizing thermodynamic definitions.

I realized earlier today that I have been approaching physical chemistry all wrong. I have a really shitty memory for information without context and so while some people can just cram equations into their head for tests that tends to not work for me. Organic rarely required memorization beyond a few weirdo reagents whose mechanisms were beyond the scope of the class; it was just mastering a few trends and then applying problem solving. Math is like this too, and physical chemistry is math. I need to learn the definitions and work from there and apply problem solving to derive everything I need.

Since I am uncomfortable with math as a language given my poor schooling in calculus, I have generally considered myself not mathematically facile enough to apply this approach to stat therm. I realized today, though, that the memorize special situations equations approach and memorizing derivations approach isn't going to work either, because there is just too much goddamn material for that. And I am facile enough with algebra and calculus...I just need to be confident that is the case. I need to work with the language and do the problem solving.