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Almost the same, but not quite: chirality explained

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How to draw enantiomers

Helping you draw enantiomers and spot asymmetric carbons

There are two easy ways to draw a pair of enantiomers. Here we are using butan-2-ol as an example. You can use either of the methods below to help you draw enantiomers in exams.

Draw the same skeleton each time, but with two substituents at the chiral carbon ‘reversed’ so that in one isomer the –OH points towards the viewer in front of the ‘plane of the paper’ (shown by a solid wedge), and in the other one it points away behind the ‘plane of the paper’ (indicated by a dashed wedge). Note that although we do not normally show hydrogen atoms on skeletal structures, we include them where it is important to emphasise the stereochemistry:

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Almost the same, but not quite: chirality explained

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Characterising polymers

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