James: McKinney tutor

Certified Tutor

I am a chemist having majored in Organic chemistry for my BS degree and environmental chemistry for my MS degree, in my career as an analytical chemist both in Research and development in a plastics industry and analytical chemist in environmental health laboratories, I have been a lifetime student of organic chemistry and chemistry in general. My passion has always been to help student excel in chemistry, especially organic chemistry which has endless applications in the present word. I started by tutoring my own children in high school and helped my daughter graduate with a BS in chemical engineering at North Carolina State University and my son as an electrical engineer from the same college. Organic chemistry bogs down students if they are behind in some basic principles such as understanding the periodic table and why the elements are arranged in specific patterns, i.e. periods and groups. They must be very clear about the filling of electrons in various shells and orbitals. A basic understanding of this will open doors to many aspects of the bonding theory, hybridization of carbon and its tetrahedral nature and the ability of carbon to infinitely bond with itself to make long chains and many complex derivatives. Chemical reactions take place at the outermost, also referred to as the valency shell and therefore understanding the orbitals in the outer shell helps the student tell what a sigma or a Pi bond is and other characteristics of a bonded atom such as lone pair of electrons which plays important roles in reactions and ligand chemistry.

My favorite hobby is soccer and football. I love music so I usually play my guitar for leisure. I spend a lot of time studying interesting topics in organic chemistry on the internet.