Chemical Forums
Specialty Chemistry Forums => Chemical Education and Careers => Topic started by: Pranav on December 28, 2012, 11:14:53 PM
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Hello all! I am in need of some advice to study Inorganic Chemistry.
I have started with this portion of Chemistry recently and there seems to be no way to learn all the reactions and periodic trends. Organic and Physical Chemistry are a lot easier but Inorganic Chemistry is giving me headache. Unlike Organic, I can't find any general patterns to learn the reactions. Even if I start to rote memorize some of the reactions, I forget the previous ones. I have completed with Metallurgy but I am afraid that I will forget many of it after some time. I could do Metallurgy because I was able to understand the process which is easier than rote-memorizing. But when it comes to s,p,d and f blocks, there are only reactions and reactions. Unlike Organic, these reactions do not follow any general pattern (if there is, I am unable to find it out). I would like to have some advice and would also like to know that how you went about learning this portion of Chemistry. I do not want any book suggestions because there is already too much in my textbook and the notes. I can't afford to spend my time on a book which contains a lot more than assigned in my text.
Thanks and sorry for my bad english (or grammar :P )!
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Anyone?
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You can still organize reactions according to a general structure. For example, organic has substitution, addition, elimination, etc.
Inorganic reactions can typically be organized according to electrochemical/redox chemistry, displacements (metathesis), decompositions (like carbonate decomposition to oxide with CO2 expelled), etc.
I do agree with you that at some point inorganic becomes more like a collection of facts rather than something that can be readily predicted according to some basic rules like we do in organic chemistry. But there's 100+ elements in the periodic table and they react differently than carbon. It's much easier to formulate rules for the reaction of just carbon than it is to formulate rules that apply to every element.
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Thanks for the help stewie! :)
Yesterday night, I did try to organize a few reactions according to the electrochemical series present here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_electrode_potential_%28data_page%29). This did help me but I am sometimes confused while using this. For instance, there are 3 different half-reactions for MnO4-, I do not understand which of the reaction takes place. Among the three reactions, two of them takes place in acidic medium but which reaction should take place? I cannot predict that while solving problems.