Tag Archives: stereochemistry

The ups and downs of cyclohexane

Cyclohexane is undoubtedly an iconic molecule. Many of us learned to draw it (with varying degrees of proficiency) very early on in our organic chemistry classes as we were introduced to chairs, boats, half-chairs, twist-boats, cis, trans, A-values, conformation and, … Continue reading

Posted in History of science | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Screw stereochemistry!

I saw my former PhD boss (Fraser Stoddart) over the weekend and he had a challenge for me. And I can’t resist a challenge. He gave me a copy of the midterm he had just given his grad class and … Continue reading

Posted in Fun, Quiz time! | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The smallest chiral hydrocarbon?

Last week I posed the following question: What is the lowest molecular weight hydrocarbon that is chiral? (A couple of restrictions — isotopes don’t count, so no deuterium or 13C, and no conformational stereoisomers, I’m looking for stable enantiomers at … Continue reading

Posted in Fun, Quiz time! | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments