CHAPTER 6: Molecular Symmetry

Enhanced diagrams for many of the structures / schemes / figures are given below:
 

Structure 6.1

Figure 6.1: The Proper Rotation Axis (C2) in Water 6.2.

 
In the structure on the right, one of the hydrogen atoms has been coloured yellow to show how the positions of the hydrogen atoms are interconverted by rotation around the C2 axis. You wil need to manually rotate the structure so that the C2 axis is vertical to see this properly.

Figure 6.2: The C4 and Four C2 Axes in XeF4 6.3.
In the structure on the right, the fluorine atoms have been coloured differently to show how the positions of the fluorine atoms change during the rotations around the C2 and C4 axes. Both structures can be manually rotated to visualize this.

Structures 6.4-6.7

 
6.4
6.5
6.6
6.7
 

Figure 6.3: The Planes of Symmetry and Reflection Operations for Formaldehyde 6.8.
In the structure on the right, the hydrogen atoms have been coloured differently to show how the positions of the hydrogen atoms change during the refection shown in Figure 6.3a.

Figure 6.5: The Centre of Inversion and Inverse Operations for Compounds 6.9 and 6.10.
6.9
6.10
 

Figure 6.6: The (S4) Improper Axis and Associated Symmetry Operations for Allene 6.11.

 
In the structure on the right, one of the hydrogen atoms has been coloured differently to show how the positions of the hydrogen atoms change during the improper rotation which you can carry out manually by rotating the molecule.

Figure 6.8: The S3n Operations of PF5 6.12.

Figure 6.9

 
6.13a
6.13b
6.13c

Structures 6.2, 6.8, 6.14, and 6.15

 
6.2
6.8
6.14
6.15
                                                                    

Figure 6.10: An Illustration that for Water 6.2, sv x s'v = C21.

 


Structures 6.16-6.18

 
6.16
6.17
6.18

Four conformations of structure 6.1

 
6.1a
6.1b
6.1c
6.1d
                                                                   

Structures 6.19a-d

 
6.19a
6.19b
6.19c
6.19d

back to Enhanced diagrams

back to STEREOCHEMISTRY home page