| | Category | CH | P06 | Chirality: The Relationship Between Angle of Rotation and |
| | Concentration |
| | Abstract | Chirality is the property of a molecule such as glucose to be non- |
| | superimposable on its mirror image. Chiral molecules also have the unique |
| | property of rotating plane-polarized light, which is light whose waves |
| | oscillate in the same plane (emitted from sources such as computer |
| | screens). The change in the orientation of the plane of polarization by a |
| | chiral molecule is known as the angle of rotation. In this experiment I |
| | constructed a polarimeter (using a laptop computer screen, a rotating |
| | base, polarized sunglasses, and a digital camera), with the purpose of |
| | determining the relationship between the angle of rotation and the |
| | concentration of glucose solutions. I did so by utilizing 0% (water), 25%, |
| | 50%, and 100% glucose solutions. I hypothesized that the angle of rotation |
| | and the concentration would be inversely related, with the angle |
| | decreasing as concentration increased. Each solution was tested using |
| | the polarimeter to determine the extent to which each solution rotated the |
| | light’s plane of polarization. |
| | The results suggest a direct relationship between the concentration of a |
| | solution containing chiral molecules and its corresponding angle of rotation, |
| | which disproved my hypothesis. This finding has many applications in |
| | manufacturing, mainly in determining the concentration of chiral molecules |
| | such as carbohydrates, amino acids, and drugs (such as penicillin). By |
| | using a large-scale version of the polarimeter described here, the process |
| | could be expanded to an industrial scale. |
| | Bibliography | 1) All of Science, by Allan R. Glanville 2) "Stereochemistry" from the Gale |
| | Encyclopedia of Science. |
| | http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=RELEV |
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| | Introduction to Stereochemistry, by Kurt Mislow |