stereochemistry

1 7.4

Study of how atoms are arranged in a molecule in three dimensions and how that changes how it acts

noun
/ˌstɛrioʊˈkɛmɪstri/

Specialized

: estereoquímica

Pasteur's discovery in 1848 led to the birth of stereochemistry, a subdiscipline of organic chemistry devoted to the study of the three-dimensional configurations of molecules.

Examples

Today we went over the three main concepts of stereochemistry: chirality, handedness, and symmetry.
Now, the words of stereochemistry often involve relationships.
So it's got the skeleton, the carbon skeleton, it's got all those things in the right stereochemistry, right?
And what makes it glucose is the stereochemistry of these other sites that end up being this is the molecule glucose.
This changes the stereochemistry of the molecule and hence the default orientation of the rotation without affecting the actual rotation itself.

Blog text (23)
Not only can a compound have more than one geometric form, but chemical reactions can also have specificity in their stereochemistry, thereby forming a product with a particular three-dimensional arrangement of the atoms.

Surface Forms

stereochemistry singular

stereochemistries plural

Morphology

stereochemistry = chemistry (semi-transparent) = stereo + chemistry

Built from the combining form 'stereo-' (relating to three-dimensional arrangement) + 'chemistry'; the form is clear but the full technical meaning is domain-specific and may not be obvious to general learners.

Etymology

Stereochemistry begins with stereo- which means 'solid' or 'three-dimensional' (the same stereo you know in sound that gives a sense of space) and ends with chemistry meaning 'the science of substances', so stereochemistry is the study of how the three-dimensional 'shape' of a molecule changes what it does and how it reacts.