What is chirality and how did it get in my molecules? - Michael Evans
Improve your understanding of molecular properties with this lesson on the fascinating property of chirality. Your hands are the secret to understanding the ...
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In the early days of organic chemistry, chemists understood that molecules were made of atoms connected through chemical bonds. However, the three-dimensional shapes of molecules were utterly unclear, since they couldn't be observed directly. Molecules were represented using simple connectivity graphs like the one you see here. It was clear to savvy chemists of the mid-19th century that these flat representations couldn't explain many of their observations. But chemical theory hadn't provided a satisfactory explanation for the three-dimensional structures of molecules. In 1874, the chemist Van't Hoff published a remarkable hypothesis: the four bonds of a saturated carbon atom point to the corners of a tetrahedron. It would take over 25 years for the quantum revolutio...
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In the early days of organic chemistry, chemists understood that molecules were made of atoms connected through chemical bonds. However, the three-dimensional shapes of molecules were utterly unclear, since they couldn't be observed directly. Molecules were represented using simple connectivity graphs like the one you see here. It was clear to savvy chemists of the mid-19th century that these flat representations couldn't explain many of their observations. But chemical theory hadn't provided a satisfactory explanation for the three-dimensional structures of molecules. In 1874, the chemist Van't Hoff published a remarkable hypothesis: the four bonds of a saturated carbon atom point to the corners of a tetrahedron. It would take over 25 years for the quantum revolutio...
