In our last post on optical rotation, we saw that when Louis Pasteur crystallized a salt of a compound then known as "racemic acid" he discovered that it formed two different types of crystals. When redissolved in water, one set of crystals rotated plane-polarized light clockwise (dextrorotatory, … [Read more...]
Optical Rotation, Optical Activity, and Specific Rotation
As the title suggests, today's post is all about optical rotation, optical activity, and specific rotation. This post was co-authored with Matt Pierce of Organic Chemistry Solutions. Ask Matt about scheduling an online tutoring session here. Here's a quick summary of what we'll cover … [Read more...]