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Stereochemistry & Chirality

Interactive 3D chirality lab: a tetrahedral chiral carbon and its non-superimposable mirror image (enantiomer), CIP R/S priority visualization, and real thalidomide / limonene examples.

Chemistry & Materials3DModerate60 FPS

Explore why a chiral molecule and its mirror image (enantiomer) can never be rotated into superposition, how CIP R/S priority is assigned, and why that geometric fact matters for real molecules like thalidomide and limonene.

⚙ Under the hood

A tetrahedral sp3 chiral carbon and its non-superimposable mirror image (enantiomer), built from four differently colored substituent groups on real tetrahedral bond directions. Camera orbit shows the pair never coincides; an overlay mode lets you drag the mirror molecule by hand and watch a live aligned-groups counter that can reach 3/4 but never 4/4. CIP R/S labels are computed from substituent priority via a signed cross-product test, with a curved 1-to-2-to-3 priority path drawn on each molecule. Switch between thalidomide (sedative R vs teratogenic S) and limonene (orange-scented R vs pine-scented S) substituent sets.

Three.jsChemistryStereochemistryChiralityEnantiomersCIP Priority

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install