Home > Community > Why does 1,2-dimethylcyclohexane only possess three stereoisomers? [duplicate]
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+ Stereochemistry
+ Cyclohexane
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Mohamed Abdelaleem

Why does 1,2-dimethylcyclohexane only possess three stereoisomers? [duplicate]

Bertrand Wengher  Follow

Quoting , ORGANIC CHEMISTRY second edition by JOSEPH M. HORNBACK, UNIVERSITY OF DENVER

1,2-dimethylcyclohexane has two chirality centers.enter image description here

The cis-diastereomer has a plane of symmetry bisecting the ring bond betweenthe two methyl groups and therefore a meso compound.It is not chiral and does not rotate plane-polarized light.The trans-diastereomer exists as a pair of enantiomers.

The chair conformation of cis-1,2-dimethylcyclohexane shows that it is chiral.But due to ring-flip , another conformation ,its enantiomer of the original conformation is also formed.These conformers interconvert rapidly at room temperature, therefore cis-1,2-dimethylcyclohexane is not chiral.

Further I quote

"stereochemical analyses such as the preceding one can be done with drawings using planar rings" pg.235.

A molecule cannot be optically active if its chiral conformations are inequilibrium with their mirror images. We consider such a molecule tobe achiral. PG- 193 - ORGANIC CHEMISTRY .EIGHTH EDITIONL.G. WADE , JR . WHITMAN COLLEGE

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