Chirality Quiz

Chirality and Stereoisomers

• A non-chiral object is referred to as an achiral object.
• Lord Kelvin first used the term 'chiral' to describe handedness or asymmetry in 1893.
• The Greek origin of the word 'chirality' comes from the Greek word 'cheir', meaning 'hand'.
• A chiral object and its mirror image are called enantiomers.
• Lord Kelvin defined chirality in his 1893 lecture as a property of a molecule that is not superposable on its mirror image.
• One of two stereoisomers that are non-superposable onto their own mirror image is called an enantiomer.
• Enantiomers and diastereomers are similar in that they are both stereoisomers, but they differ in that enantiomers are non-superposable mirror images, while diastereomers are not.
• A molecule with chirality rotates plane-polarized light due to the interaction between the electromagnetic field of the light and the asymmetric electric distribution of the molecule.
• A mixture of equal amounts of each enantiomer is called a racemic mixture.
• The number of stereoisomers a molecule has can be determined by using the formula 2^n, where n is the number of asymmetric carbon atoms in the molecule.