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I would love if there were an illustration of how to understand organic chemistry as not a collection of endless "rules" that yet have annoying exceptions, and tables and tables of pKas that mean you just have to remember that something does what it does, "because".

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I have been working on this site for 11 years, has 400 free articles on intro organic chemistry: https://www.masterorganicchemistry.com Probably the most fun thing I ever did was breaking down the mechanisms of 25-30 reactions into individual steps, and then assigning a musical note to each step. Playing the sequence of notes helps you recognize the patterns behind the reactions. One pattern in particular (protonation-carbonyl addition-deprotonation-protonation-elimination-deprotonation, or PADPED) covers the mechanism of at least 8 superficially different reactions. Another great organic chemistry resource: https://organicchemistrydata.org/hansreich/resources/pka/#pk...

Thank you! I will have a look.

That's the problem with chemistry though, a lot of it is "just because". We only have certain numbers to work with. The Lego set of organic chemistry only contains so many pieces.

Wait there's a LEGO SET!?!?

Oh, wait, you probably meant that as a metaphor, didn't you?

Not my downvote, but lots of molecular model sets are more like Tinkertoys.

Edit: corrective upvote actually

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