Question

Find the no. of optical isomers of CH3(CHOH)3C2H5?

Answer 1

There are eight optical isomers.

Explanation:

The structure of hexane-2,3,4-triol is

There are three chiral carbons, marked by asterisks.

The maximum number of stereoisomers is `2^3 = 8`.

There is no internal plane of symmetry, so there are eight stereoisomers.

Here are four of the structures drawn as Fischer projections,

And here are their mirror images.

"We leave it as an exercise for the student" to assign `R,S` configurations to the isomers.