cats

We Sponsored A Cat!

We Sponsored A Cat!November 29, 2013

As a result of the recent webinar “Everything I Know About Stereochemistry I Learned From Cats”, we raised enough money to sponsor a cat from Safe Haven For Cats, a no-kill animal shelter in Raleigh, North…

Tagged as: cats, fun

Fare Thee Well, Oh Cats of Jerusalem

Fare Thee Well, Oh Cats of JerusalemJanuary 1, 2011

Our contracts have ended and the wife and I have moved from Jerusalem to small town Ontario, somewhere between Lebanon and Carthage. A little over a week ago, we were walking through the Mediterranean, and now we are …

Tagged as: cats, enantiocats

On Cats, Part 8: Moe the Meso Cat

On Cats, Part 8: Moe the Meso CatDecember 24, 2010

I got a very excited call from Walter yesterday. He was looking out the window of his apartment in Talbieh and spied a freaky looking cat with each of his two heads buried in a separate dumpster, happily chewing on so…

Tagged as: cats, diastereomers, enantiomers, fischer projection, meso, stereocenters, symmetry

On Cats, Part 7: The Fischer Projection

On Cats, Part 7: The Fischer ProjectionDecember 22, 2010

Last weekend while parts of North America and Europe were getting buried in snow,  my wife and I went to Tel Aviv to pick up some gifts and dip our feet in the sea one last time. There are worse ways to spend a weeke…

Tagged as: cats, diastereomers, enantiomers, fischer proejction, meso, r/s, stereocenters

On Cats, Part 6: Stereocenters

On Cats, Part 6: StereocentersDecember 15, 2010

Let’s recap what we’ve talked about so far. Sawhorse cat and Freaky Sawhorse cat are constitutional isocats. But Freaky Sawhorse Cat has a mirror image of himself crawling around somewhere – a cat t…

Tagged as: cats, chirality, constitutional isomers, diastereomers, enantiomers, r/s, sawhorse projection, stereocenters, stereoisomers

On Cats, Part 5: Enantiocats vs. Diastereocats

On Cats, Part 5: Enantiocats vs. DiastereocatsDecember 6, 2010

I was out for a walk the other day and I saw 3 of the weirdest/ugliest looking cats I’d ever seen.Even weirder than Freaky Sawhorse cat. Luckily I got pictures because nobody would believe me if I described them…

Tagged as: cats, diastereomers, enantiomers, newman projection, stereocenters, stereochemistry, stereoisomers

On Cats, Part 4: Enantiocats

On Cats, Part 4: EnantiocatsNovember 29, 2010

A few weeks ago we moved away from our old neighborhood where I first saw Sawhorse Cat. However a few days ago my friend Walter (who knows I like pictures of cats) told me he thought he saw him hanging around the old …

Tagged as: bond line diagrams, cats, constitutional isomers, diastereomers, eneantiomers, newman projections, stereocenters, stereoisomers

On Cats, Part 3: Newman Projections

On Cats, Part 3: Newman ProjectionsNovember 22, 2010

Do you know where the saying “there’s more than one way to skin a cat” comes from? Me neither. But I do know one thing: there is more than one way to draw cat conformations. Last time I introduced th…

Tagged as: cats, conformations, eclipsed, newman proejctions, rotation, staggered, stereocenters

On Cats, Part 2: Cat Line Diagrams

On Cats, Part 2: Cat Line DiagramsNovember 15, 2010

When this blog was about organic chemistry, I’d never stoop so low as to put cute pictures of cats on my website to drive traffic. Now that it’s all about cat science, I’ve lost any compunctions I mi…

Tagged as: cat line diagram, cats, configuration, constitutional, fun, isomers, rotation

On Cats, Part 1: Conformations and Configurations

On Cats, Part 1: Conformations and ConfigurationsNovember 11, 2010

[NOTE: this has been amended to correct some confusion on my part on the difference between configurational and constitutional isocats. Thanks to Prof. Gary Weisman (UNH) for making me aware of the error] As I said ea…

Tagged as: cats, configurational, configurations, conformations, constitutional, fun, isomers