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Topic: Absolute configuration  (Read 1773 times)

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Offline gamerninja213

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Absolute configuration
« on: February 24, 2013, 09:25:36 PM »
Sorry. This might seem like a very stupid question, but when assigning absolute configuration for glyceraldehyde, why is it that CHO gets priority over  HOCH2 ?

Offline camptzak

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Re: Absolute configuration
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2013, 10:18:10 PM »
The CHO carbon has two bonds to oxygen and one bond to hydrogen. The HOCH2 carbon has two bonds to hydrogen and only one bond to oxygen. Since the CHO has more bonds to an element of higher atomic number, it has priority.
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Offline Dan

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