Heuristic chemistry--addition reactions

Organic chemistry is often considered a difficult subject requiring great effort to achieve expert status. Only once this level has been reached, judging, deciding, and recalling chemical information will be fast and guided by heuristic strategies. These principles, used intuitively, improve the efficiency and speed of problem-solving and decision-making procedures. Establishing these strategies in teaching and learning chemistry should significantly help students acquire well-structured procedural knowledge early in their education. In an attempt to improve conceptual thinking in teaching organic chemistry, in this contribution we develop a heuristic view of addition reactions and propose a new way of perceiving this class of organic reactions.