SAGAR SINGH - IIT DELHI
Last Activity: 13 Years ago
Optical isomers are molecules that differ three-dimensionally by the placement of substituents around one or more atoms in a molecule. Optical isomers were given their name because they were first able to be distinguished by how they rotated plane-polarized light. These molecules are not necessarily locked into their positions, but cannot be converted into one another, even by a rotation around a single bond.
For example, consider the following two molecules.