Drawing Lewis Structures

Drawing and Understanding Organic Structure

In this course, Professor Max Majireck (Hamilton College), we learn about drawing and predicting organic structure, as well as predicting the properties of organic compounds based on their structure. We begin by: (i) drawing out simple Lewis structures, before introducing valence shell electron pair repulsion theory (VSEPR); then (ii) introducing some simple compounds and how we might draw them out; before (iii) looking at some different types of isomers of organic compounds, including structural and optical isomers, as well as conformers; then (iv) introducing resonance structures, and the ways in which we draw out reaction mechanisms, before (v) looking at bond polarity, distinguishing this from molecular polarity; and then finally (vi) introducing some of the intermolecular forces we see between compounds.

Drawing Lewis Structures

In the first mini-lecture, we learn how to draw out Lewis structures. For simple molecules like methane, Lewis structures are easy to predict but as we introduce other atoms and functional groups, we introduce a theory we can use to predict their structure. Known as VSEPR (Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion) theory, we use it on some sample compounds.