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4. Optically active molecules
4.1 Chirality
More than a century and a half ago, Louis Pasteur had the intuition that an optically active compound, in his case a tartrate, could exist in two isomeric forms, non-superimposable images of each other in a mirror. This property, for a molecule, or more generally for an object, of not being able to superimpose itself on its image in a plane mirror, is called chirality. This term comes from the Greek "keir", the hand: the right hand and the left hand are not equivalent and are each other's image in a mirror. Many other objects are chiral, such as snail shells, springs and ears.
For molecular edifices, it is possible to set out geometrical conditions for them to be chiral, and therefore to possess optical activity:...
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