How are the aromatic rings represented? Why?

1 Answer
May 5, 2015

Aromaticity is indicated by a circle inside the ring. The circle indicates that all the bonds are equivalent.

The most common aromatic compound is benzene.

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Benzene is a resonance hybrid of two contributors.

It doesn't consist of alternating double and single bonds.

Rather, every bond is a 1½ bond.

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These partial bonds are indicated by dashed lines.

For simplicity, the dashed lines are usually drawn as a dashed or a solid circle.

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