How many stereoisomers are possible for 2-methyl-1,3-dichlorohexane?

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Answer 1 · 2016-04-10T14:49:59

There are four possible stereoisomers for 2-methyl-1,3-dichlorohexane.

The structure of 2-methyl-1,3-dichlorohexane is

$"ClCH"_2 stackrelcolor(blue)("*")("C")"H"("CH"_3)stackrelcolor(blue)("*")("C")"HClCH"_2"CH"_2"CH"_3$ .

We see that there are two chiral carbons (marked with an asterisk) — they are attached to four different groups.

The maximum number of stereoisomers is $2^n$ , where $n$ is the number of chiral centres.

There is no internal plane of symmetry, so the number of stereoisomers is $2^2 = 4$ .

Their structures are

4 Stereoisomers