This piece of work was a collaboration work with my son, Russell. Here is a short write up on the work describing the idea and concept behind. The work aims to illustrate the importance of stereochemistry using the chemical Thalidomide as an example. Thalidomide is an oral medication first prescribed in West Germany in 1957 for insomnia, morning sickness and anxiety. A few years later, it was discovered to have caused a significant amount of birth defects in infants when consumed during pregnancy, affecting approximately 10,000 babies, of which 40% did not survive. Subsequent research showed that Thalidomide exists in two forms (isomers) instead of just one, where they differed in their three-dimensional orientations. This concept is known today as Stereoisomerism, where two forms of the same molecule (enantiomers) appear as mirror images of each other, but are non-superimposable. Enantiomers exist as racemic mixtures, where each form is present in equal amounts in a mixture. An ...
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