Chirality

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Would this be a chiral centre?
A carbon attached to a different length of carbon/different primary, secondary or tertiary carbon etc?

Reply 1

Butene

10

a chiral centre is just a carbon that's attached to 4 different functional groups and is able to produce optical isomers (non-superimposable mirror images), from what I know that should be a chiral centre but I've never seen a question with just hydrocarbons. Did you come up with that yourself?

Reply 2

Yazomi

OP

21

Original post by Butene

a chiral centre is just a carbon that's attached to 4 different functional groups and is able to produce optical isomers (non-superimposable mirror images), from what I know that should be a chiral centre but I've never seen a question with just hydrocarbons. Did you come up with that yourself?

Yeah we’re going over chiral centres and stuff but they said like you said it has to be attached to different functional groups but I just wasn’t sure if different carbons would count as a different functional group

Reply 3

Butene

10

Original post by Yazomi

Yeah we’re going over chiral centres and stuff but they said like you said it has to be attached to different functional groups but I just wasn’t sure if different carbons would count as a different functional group

I went over it recently as well and I'm pretty sure the answer's yes since they're all different functional groups (hydrogen, methyl, propyl and hexyl) but they'd never ask you a question that's just purely a hydrocarbon so I wouldn't worry about it, from all the examples I've seen they always use different elements or compounds for the functional groups.

Reply 4

TSRTD

11

Original post by Yazomi

Yeah we’re going over chiral centres and stuff but they said like you said it has to be attached to different functional groups but I just wasn’t sure if different carbons would count as a different functional group

Yes, this would be a chiral centre. Whatever the four groups attached to the carbon are, if they are all different then the two isomers are non-superimposable mirror images of each other.