I'm currently in my first semester of organic chemistry, and we got to interpreting IR and NMR spectroscopy. I'm really lost at this point, obviously I'm not expecting answers or anything, but can you give me some advice/tips on how to approach it? Anything you say would be a great help! I've read the book and started watching videos online, are there any you know of and recommend? Again thank you for taking the time to read this!
Hey! IR and NMR takes a long time to get used to, very few people “get it” immediately. You’ll get so much better with practice, so I suggest a few things and a few different places to practice with! The first (to re-learn the basics) is Khan Academy. This website really helped me with a lot of concepts in undergrad!
To practice NMR and IR, I suggest checking out the following:
Problem sets (they give you an nmr and you deduce the structure)
http://www-usr.rider.edu/~grushow/nmr/NMR_tutor/selftests/problems_fs_start.html
More problem sets with varying difficulty (also has COSY and DEPT spectra)
https://webspectra.chem.ucla.edu/
For predicting 1H or 13C NMR spectra, this is a website with SO MANY literature based values (used extremely frequently in grad. labs)
http://www.chem.wisc.edu/areas/reich/nmr/h-data/hdata.htm
http://www.chem.wisc.edu/areas/reich/nmr/c13-data/cdata.htm
A spectral database for known, usually relatively uncomplicated compounds where you’re looking for their structure:
http://riodb01.ibase.aist.go.jp/sdbs/cgi-bin/direct_frame_top.cgi