Chemical Forums
Chemistry Forums for Students => High School Chemistry Forum => Topic started by: nknitro on November 30, 2005, 03:02:27 PM
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Hi,
Can someone please put the term 'chiral centre' into context for me please; I don't quite understand it.
Also, does nandrolone have a 'chiral centre'? can someone post a link for this if it has one.
This is for a project I'm doing and its prooving to be harder than expected.
All help is greatly appreciated.
Thank You.
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First of all, as you see NANDROLONE has many chiral centres (stressed with *). I hope you'd appreciate what I did: every chiral centre has its own configuration expressed (R or S and E or Z for double bonds).
A chiral center is an atom which is linked to 4 different groups. Chirality deals with spatial position of atoms.
Two molecules which are different because of ONE chiral centre, are enantiomers. Molecules which differ for TWO or MORE chiral centres are diasteroisomers.
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chairality is the opposite of symetry
a chiral center is the atom (usually carbon) that is linked to different groups.
and lacks any kind of symmetry elemnt ( center, axis or plane)
that is if carbon is our central atom as in the figure below, it must be linked to 4 different groups
thus the molecule will be nonsuperimposable with its mirror image and will be optically active( has the abilty to rotate the plane polarized light by specific angle)
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hey thanks guys.
thats really cleared it up for me.
:)