Many chemical reactions are explained by means of a so-called 'reaction mechanism'. In a mechanism, the flow of electrons that cause atoms to rearrange is presented from start to finish. This vital aspect of all chemical reactions is not depicted very well using drawings made by a computer. Those usually show the end-product, with all the arrows displayed at once. It is hard for students to under…

Over the last years there have been two clear trends that have a strong effect on the way that practical courses offered by ORC (Organic Chemistry) are being organised. Firstly, we continue to see an increase in the number of students. In particular, this growth puts a strain in our supervise-intense practical courses and requires us to come up with ways to supervise these courses more efficientl…

BML (Molecular Life Sciences) and BBT (Biotechnology) are programs with a broad scope of disciplines, of which organic chemistry is just one. Every discipline has its own specific lab skills. In the first year, several basic lab skills in organic chemistry are introduced to our students (e.g. crystallisation, extraction, distillation). Much of this knowledge is not activated in other courses. So,…