Optical Isomers

Optical isomers are molecules that have the same chemical formula and structural arrangement but differ in the way their atoms are arranged in space. Imagine holding a pair of gloves—left and right gloves are mirror images but cannot be perfectly aligned by rotation; they are related as mirror images, like optical isomers. These distinct structures can interact differently with polarized light, causing one to rotate light clockwise and the other counterclockwise. This property is significant in fields like chemistry and medicine, where the different effects of these mirror-image molecules can influence biological processes.