How can you identify achiral molecules?
1 Answer
By the presence of a mirror plane in the molecule's structure.
Explanation:
How does this help you? Well, not so much, but you can take a bit of a short cut. Carbon has 4 substituents in a tetrahedral array. On the printed page we write
If there are 4 different substuents around the central carbon, i.e.
On the other hand, if at least one of the substituents are the same, i.e.
Given what I have said, you are cutting your own throat if you don't use a model set. This could be as simple as plasticene and toothpicks. It is hard for us to see chirality; it is even harder to represent a three-dimensional chiral structure on the printed page.