How are enantiomers drawn?
1 Answer
I have posted a simple picture, in which the optical isomerism is unambiguous.
Explanation:
The picture shows the 2 optical antipodes of a given chiral compound. Clearly, around the central carbon there are 4 substituents with different colors, and (not so clearly) the depicted compounds ARE NOT SUPERIMPOSABLE.
It is a fact for a given optical antipode, the INTERCHANGE of ANY 2 SUBSTITUENTS gives its enantiomer. And thus, if I interchange the substituents again, the ORIGINAL enantiomer is generated. It takes some practice to draw this isomerism unambiguously, but remember what I said in regard to the exchange of any pair of substituents.
It is well worth the little time it takes to construct a few simple models (this could be as simple as toothpicks and different coloured blobs of plasticene. You should always be allowed to bring such models into a test.
