SciShow
Terpenes: The Most Common Language in the World
The most popular language on earth isn’t spoken, it’s smelled. Those smells are made up of terpenes, a multipurpose class of chemical compounds.
Crash Course
Chemoselectivity and Protecting Groups: Crash Course Organic Chemistry
Things have been getting more and more complicated here in Crash Course Organic Chemistry, and as we deal with more complex molecules, parts of molecules we don’t want to react will start reacting along with the parts that we do....
SciShow
Molecule Architecture: SciShow Talk Show with Dr. Orion Berryman
Dr. Orion Berryman talks with Hank about the cool chemistry going on in his lab, and Jessi from Animal Wonders brings in Prickle the Hedgehog!
Crash Course
Crossed Aldol Reactions, Enones, and Conjugate Addition: Crash Course Organic Chemistry
Insects can communicate with each other about all kinds of things, but instead of using words, they use… you guessed it! Organic Chemistry! Insects can send signals to each other by secreting compounds, and one such compound used by...
Crash Course
The Diels-Alder & Other Pericyclic Reactions: Crash Course Organic Chemistry
Going out in the sun can work wonders for your mood, but unfortunately too much UV exposure can do serious damage to your DNA. This damage occurs through a type of organic reaction called a pericyclic reaction. In this episode of Crash...
Crash Course
Organometallic Reagents and Carbanions: Crash Course Organic Chemistry
Have you ever wondered why the gas station has “unleaded fuel” but there isn’t a “leaded” option? The answer has to do with a chemical called tetraethyl lead, which is an organometallic compound, or an organic compound with a...
Crash Course
Retrosynthesis and Liquid-Liquid Extraction: Crash Course Organic Chemistry
As we construct more complex organic molecules, it can start to feel like decrypting a complex code. Organic synthesis takes simple starting materials, and turns them into complex structures, and reverse engineering can help us figure...
SciShow
6 of The Weirdest Places on Earth | Compilation
There are a lot of weird places here on Earth, but here are a few of our favorite strange spots!
Crash Course
The Aldol and Claisen Reactions: Crash Course Organic Chemistry
Organic chemistry is a great workout for your brain, and to keep its energy up, your brain needs glucose. To maintain blood glucose levels, our bodies go through a process called gluconeogenesis, which involves the important type of...
SciShow
Blue Is Pretty Special: How Nature Gets the Blues
It's really difficult for life to create blue pigments, but the color can appear in a handful of compounds that create just the right conditions to reflect blue photons.
Crash Course
Cyclohexanes - Crash Course Organic Chemistry
Hexagons appear all over the natural world from honeycomb to bubbles, and they even appear in organic chemistry! In this episode of Crash Course Organic Chemistry, we're learning all about cyclohexanes, including how rings pucker to...
Crash Course
Medicinal Chemistry and Penicillin Total Synthesis: Crash Course Organic Chemistry
These days, we don't have to worry too much about meeting an early demise from ulcers, breaks in the stomach lining that could be fatal back in the early 1900s. This is because we have medicines to treat them, like proton pump...
SciShow
Weird Places: The Glowing Blue Lava at Kawah Ijen
Maybe you've seen pictures of glowing blue lava flows and dismissed them as Photoshop trickery. Healthy skepticism is good, but there really is a volcano in Indonesia where a unique fluke of chemistry creates an eerie blue glow.
Crash Course
Don't Reanimate Corpses! Frankenstein Part 1: Crash Course Literature 205
In which John Green teaches you about Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein. Sure, you know Frankenstein the cultural phenomenon, but how much do you know about the novel that started it all? You'll learn about the Romantic movement in...
Crash Course
Biological Polymers: Crash Course Organic Chemistry
You might think a self regulating factory sounds pretty unbelievable, but that’s pretty much exactly how our bodies work! Our bodies are full of regulatory mechanisms that keep all the organic molecules we need to live in balance. In...
Crash Course
Intro to Substitution Reactions - Crash Course Organic Chemistry
Substitution reactions can have really powerful effects, both good and bad, in our bodies. You might remember substitution reactions as displacement reactions from general chemistry, but (you guessed it!) in organic chemistry they’re a...
Crash Course
Synthesis and Column Chromatography: Crash Course Organic Chemistry
Even though all living things have a lot in common, different organisms can have very different reactions to the same organic chemicals. That means it’s really important for organic chemists to be able to purify chemicals and separate...
Crash Course
Biochemical Building Blocks & Fischer and Haworth Projections: Crash Course Organic Chemistry
Although we've spent a lot of time in this series looking at human-made organic chemicals, the term "organic chemistry" was originally used to describe molecules isolated from living things. In this episode of Crash Course Organic...
Crash Course
Conjugation & UV-Vis Spectroscopy: Crash Course Organic Chemistry
Carrots get their orange-y color from, you guessed it, an organic chemical. This chemical, called beta carotene, gets its pigment from its conjugated electron system. We’ve talked some already about conjugation, but in this episode of...
Crash Course
How to Identify Molecules - Proton NMR: Crash Course Organic Chemistry
If you were given a chemical and told to identify it, how would you go about doing that? You could look at different factors like color, boiling point, melting point, or smell, but the answer still might not be clear. Thankfully, today...
Crash Course
E1 and E2 Reactions - Crash Course Organic Chemistry
We’ve spent the last few episodes talking about substitution reactions, but now it’s time to talk about a related type of reaction: elimination reactions! Elimination reactions are super important because they are the main way we can...
Crash Course
Thermodynamics and Energy Diagrams - Crash Course Organic Chemistry
In organic chemistry, different reactions can take place at vastly different speeds. To better understand whether a reaction actually will happen, and how useful that reaction is, we need to understand thermodynamics and kinetics. In...
Crash Course
Determining SN1, SN2, E1, and E2 Reactions: Crash Course Organic Chemistry
Organic chemistry isn’t that different from an adventure game, with substrates as characters, nucleophiles as magic potions, and reaction conditions as different magical kingdoms. In this episode of Crash Course Organic Chemistry, we’ll...
TED Talks
TED: A crash course in organic chemistry | Jakob Magolan
Jakob Magolan is here to change your perception of organic chemistry. In an accessible talk packed with striking graphics, he teaches us the basics while breaking the stereotype that organic chemistry is something to be afraid of.