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Frontispiece: Molecular Chirality in Classical Spacetime: Solving the Controversy about the Spinning Cone Model of Rotating Molecules
Author(s) -
Petitjean Michel
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
chemistry – a european journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Reports
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.687
H-Index - 242
eISSN - 1521-3765
pISSN - 0947-6539
DOI - 10.1002/chem.202084761
Subject(s) - chirality (physics) , spinning , ambiguity , physics , parity (physics) , philosophy , theoretical physics , quantum mechanics , chemistry , symmetry breaking , spontaneous symmetry breaking , linguistics , nambu–jona lasinio model , polymer chemistry
The spinning cone is a model of rotating molecules used by Barron in 1986 in relation to asymmetric synthesis and to parity violation. He considered that the non‐translating cone spinning about its symmetry axis has false chirality (i.e., it is not chiral), whereas Mislow concluded in 1999 that it is indeed chiral and severely criticized the true versus false chirality nomenclature introduced by Barron, who still disagreed in 2013 with the conclusion of Mislow. In his Concept article on page 10648 ff., M. Petitjean discusses this disagreement and concludes that the controversy comes from an ambiguity in the spinning cone model and that, in fact, both authors were right. In addition, light is thrown on the true chirality versus false chirality controversy with a very recently published result, which was unavailable to both authors: this is a new definition of chirality that encompasses the one introduced by Lord Kelvin at the end of the 19th century.