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Optical Purity and Enantiomeric Excess

February 24, 2017 By James Ashenhurst Leave a Comment

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...]

Filed Under: Stereochemistry, Uncategorized Tagged With: enantiomeric excess, optical purity, optical rotation, specific rotation

Optical Rotation, Optical Activity, and Specific Rotation

February 7, 2017 By James Ashenhurst 8 Comments

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...]

Filed Under: Stereochemistry Tagged With: absolute configuration, cahn-ingold-prelog, d and l, enantiomers, optical isomers, optical rotation, pasteur, polarimetry, R and S, specific rotation, stereochemistry, tartaric acid

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