L3 ORGANIC COMPOUNDS
CHEAT SHEET
ABOUT THE STANDARD
This standard is broken in to a few key parts
Naming
Isomers
Solubility, melting points and boiling points
Esters
Reactions
Polymers
There will be be explicit questions on each of these areas, but expect naming and reactions to pop up
throughout the paper
STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS
Naming and drawing are still really important but all of these skills carry over from level 2 so go ahead and
check out the cheat sheet for that standard for tips on this!
Reactions:
The big one that everyone freaks out over. ORGANIC CHEMISTRY IS NOT ABOUT MEMORISATION! While yes
there are bits you will need to memorise but it’s no more than any other subject.
The thing about trying to memorise a big sheet the one you were probably given is that it doesn’t get
you to think about the chemistry that’s actually going on. Instead of memorising statements like “alkene
+ acidified water goes to alcohol” try to think about the type of reaction that could possibly occur.
For example, if we had this reaction:
What would the product be? Well if we had a bit of a mind blank in the exam and forgot our statement
then we would pretty much be out of luck. However we can apply some logic and reasoning to predict
the outcome!
Think about the five different types of reaction there are in level 3 organics: Addition, elimination,
oxidation, reduction, and substitution. This reaction has to fit into one of those categories right?
If we learn what happens in each reaction, and what sort of molecules do each kind of reaction, then
we can just fit our example into one of those categories and take it from there.
For a more in depth guide to this thinking check out the StudyTime walkthrough but let’s just run
through this one really quick.
When looking at a question like this we can ask, is this an addition reaction? Well addition reactions are
