Teaching Organic Chemistry using Analogies

Students often struggle with the sheer volume of new material when learning organic chemistry. Good analogies provide students a way to connect new information with familiar facts, which reduces the cognitive load required for the subject. Analogies can help clarify chemical and theoretical. In this paper we describe the following analogies: justifying meticulous attention to detail, grouping similar reactions, treating organic chemistry like a new language, comparing aromaticity to a Noble Gas, viewing electron energy diagrams as wells, thinking of electrons as being like water, treating bulky bases as characters in a movie, comparing NMR proton coupling to the neighborhood, personification of intermolecular forces, using litmus paper colors as acid/base colors, finding shapes of everyday objects to represent organic molecules, and comparing hard-soft acid-base interactions to Velcro. We hope this collection of analogies will provide new ideas to use in teaching organic chemistry.