Comprehsion with just one question!
Louis pasteur had managed to separate two enantiomers by hand picking crystals of a tartarate salt and discovered that the two solutions had exactly opposite optical activity.He himself stood in disbelief at his discovery as come time back Mistlerlich said that all the crystals of the salt Galileo had used were identical and whole scientific community belived him!So he reported his finding to Jean Baptiste-Biot!He asked him to repeat the experiment in front of him...Experiment was repeated and Biot confirmed Discovery of galileo and world came to know of enantiomeric existence.Well on further research it was found that Galileo was lucky as only under the conditions he prepared the salt it existed in enantiomeric form!
This led to two conclusions:
1.Enantiomers do exist
2.Enantiomers could not be discovered for so many years as enantiomers have identical physical properties!
Question no.1:You have two "smelly" enantiomers of a given compound with you.Choose correct statements among follwoing
(A)Both isomers have smell same
(B)Both have different smell
(C)Insufficient data
(D)None of the above!
1They both will have different smells.
Actually, many of the physical properties are similar for enantiomers (like optical rotation) but it is not sure that the smell and taste will also be similar.
We know that different enantiomers bring out different biological responses (if you remember from Chemistry in everyday life chapter in NCERT :) ). You can easily relate that if there is a different response, then our sense of smell might differ as well :)
Hope it helps :)
1great work!vishubhoy!
waise this question was my own creation![3][3]...while i was reading the last chapter of NCERT and then suddenly i felt need to understand the 3-D molecules i found this article on galileo [3]....so both ideas mixed made up this comprehension!
1That was indeed an awesome question. Such subtle things often go unnoticed.
Thanks for bringing it up :)