by Monica Fong – used with permission
Originally posted in OSU PRiSM
You are the center of my world
like a carbon is the center
of a tetrahedral compound.
Its hybridization is sp3
which means noting to you
but everything to me.
Our relationship just happened
just like an alkyl halide breaking
and forming new bonds with a
nucleophile at the transition state
of an Sn2 reaction.
But that’s just the slow step,
the rate-determining step.
Increasing the concentrations
will, indeed,
increase the speed.
But this can only happen
if four different groups are
attached to a carbon center,
only then is it chiral…
Chiral, chirality, nonsuperimposable mirror images
just like two hands, our two hands,
one on top of the other,
it doesn’t fit, oh, but it does fit – perfectly.
