Predicting Chemical Reactions

There are several strategies for predicting the product of a chemical reaction. You can memorize what the reagents do and what products they make and you can develop an intuition for what will happen by understanding the mechanisms of reactions. It is important to use a combination of these techniques. Students that only memorize the reactions in their notes will not do as well as the students that also have a good grasp on how to feel their way through reactions by looking at the acidity of the molecules, their dipole moments, and other features that govern where electrons will move.

There are some reagents that absolutely everyone should memorize. These are so common that it is almost certain that they will pop up on an exam at one time or another. The same is true for chemical reactions of these include Sn1, Sn2, E1 and E2 reactions.