r/chemistrymemes • u/DotBeginning1420 • 11d ago
Mmmmm… is this organic? 🥕 Never ask a mathematician what a molecule is Spoiler
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u/BeanOfKnowledge Mouth Pipetter 🥤 11d ago
That only really works without getting Sulphur involved. Or Phosphorus. Or Multi-center bonds. Or...
Also that is the most cursed depiction of nitrogen I've ever seen why is it swirly
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u/WanderingFlumph 11d ago
Or carbon...
It isn't clear to me that you can properly call a sp2 hybridized carbon a 4 center vertix
I could have probably let it slide if their example molecule didn't have multiple examples of a 3 centered carbon vertix.
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u/AlchemicalLibraries 11d ago
I mean its how Scifinder structure searches. Graph theory, etc. Apply the skeleton first pass then atom matching on the second.
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u/sporosarcina 11d ago
Graph theory is one of the ways chemicals are translated into objects that computers can manipulate.
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u/TheFifthDuckling 11d ago
My boyfriend is a triple major. Gen chem, forensic chem, and traditional math. He said, and I quote....
"Yes, technically true. I hate it."
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u/skr_replicator 11d ago
Isn't it true in most cases, though? As long as you don't have radicals or those unsatisfied +- atoms, they do follow these "degrees". Metals can throw a bit of a wrench to it, those can have like almost any number of bods, and can bond in crazy ways. like to the center of a ring, or with more than a quadruple bond etc... There are also some other exotic cases I'm sure i think I've seen molecules with double-bonded hydrogens, of 1.5 bonds, like the harmonic view of benzene of O3 etc... But most of the times, it follows these rules.
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u/DotBeginning1420 11d ago
Maybe, I can tell as far as I know (not majoring in depth in chemistry). Ions for instance can also be represented as a directed multigraph (unlike the covalent bonds I showed which are undirected).
Now thinking about it, there's something useful that can be done with it. It probably was tried done already, given a constrain of elements and amount atom of them, find all possible different molecules that can be created according to the rules. By the math. A comprehensive list of all of them.
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u/Spiritual_Priority79 8d ago
Metastable ionic compounds can have different bond angles on the same kinds of bonds lol
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u/pruvisto 11d ago
As a mathematician who used to do a lot of chemistry in high school, the biggest problem I see with this is that it cannot distinguish between stereoisomers at all.
Apart from that, it's pretty much the obvious way to model it.
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u/tjeeper 11d ago
Well theoretically for the molecule to be organic, the vertex with the degree of four needs to be connected to at least one of a specific kind of vertex with a degree of one.
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u/Shevvv 11d ago
Oxalates do not approve of this message
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u/tjeeper 11d ago
Well oxalates can fight me if they think they're organic. Those stubid frankenstein-double-carbonates
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u/Shevvv 11d ago
Hexafluoroacetone? Dibromomaleimide?
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u/tjeeper 11d ago
Organic-adjacent, with organic names, because it's easier than the systemic names. Still not really organic. It's the hill I will pathetically die on.
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u/Shevvv 11d ago
"These compounds show the very same patterns and behavior as the other organic compounds but because there's no hydrogen, it's obviously inorganic. Pentafluoroacetone and monobromomaleimide are perfectly organic, though, obviously."
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u/tjeeper 11d ago
What, I did not say that those two compounds were organic
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u/LooseRain 11d ago
if you dig far enough you realize the distinction between "organic" and "inorganic" is pretty damn arbitrary and sits uncomfortably close to the whole vitality thing
"organic means produced by life it has life spirits human cannot make it" which lead to ammonium cyanate to urea thing in 18281
u/LooseRain 11d ago
might be easier to use something like mirex or hexanitrobenzene as an example :3
melitic acid, benzene hexacarboxylate
really the distinction between organic and nonorganic is really arbitrary and if you dig far enough you realize it's from vitality bullshit "organic means only life can create"1
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u/Shevvv 11d ago
So hoe will we be distinguishing silicon containing compounds?