Stereochemistry

Stereochemistry

The stereochemistry is the branch of chemistry that is responsible for studying the spatial arrangement of atoms belonging to a molecule and how this affects the properties and reactivity of these molecules. It can also be defined as the study of the isomers: chemical compounds with the same molecular formula but different structural formulas. Most interesting is the study of benzene which is an important part of stereochemistry is the study of molecules chiral.Stereochemistry provides important knowledge for chemistry in general whether inorganic,organic,biological, physical chemistry or polymer chemistry.

The science of chemistry organic, as we said, is based on the relationship between structure and molecular properties. That part of science that deals with the structure in three dimensions is called stereochemistry (from the Greek stereos, "solid"). One aspect of stereochemistry is the stereo isomerism. Recall that the isomers are different compounds that have the same molecular formula. The kind owners of isomers which differ only by the spatial orientation of their atoms (but that are equal to each other as to which atoms are bonded to which other) are called stereoisomers.

Classes of Stereoisomerism

Geometrical isomers are those isomers that are generated due to the rigidity of the double bond and there are two classes: Cis (on the same side) and Trans (on opposite sides) so that there are geometrical isomers (Cis / Trans), the groups linked to the same carbon double bond must be different. Cis and Trans isomers are also present in the cyclic compounds. Isomerism optics is isomers that differ in the distribution space of your links and having different optical activity.

Explanation of the optical activity

The light naturally vibrates in all directions, but by passing through a prism polarizer vibrates in one plane, in which case the light is called polarized light. When polarized light is passed through a substance through an optimally active substance, it rotates the plane of polarized light at a specific angle a to the right or left. In summary, an optically active substance has when it has the feature of rotating the plane of polarized light(Blazewska, 2011). In practice, the optical activity of a substance is determined with the polarimeter.

History

The beginning of the stereochemistry started with the discovery of polarized light by Louis Malus in 1808 and the discovery of the optical rotation of solutions of sugar by Jean-Baptiste Biot.Louis Pasteur was the first chemist to observe and describe the stereochemistry while working in 1849 with salts of tartaric acid obtained from the production of wine. He found that crystals of these are formed and some of them rotated the plane of light polarized in the direction of clockwise and some against, but both had the same physical and chemical properties. A final study found a difference, the rotation of the light polarized that passed through these crystals was different in each, in addition to the polarized light of other crystals not rotated. We now know that this property of rotating polarized light is due to optical stereoisomerism. In 1874,JacobusHenricus Hoff and Joseph explained ...