Conformational Isomerism - Equilibrium Population of Conformers

Equilibrium Population of Conformers

The population of different conformers follows a Boltzmann distribution:

$\frac{N_i}{N_{total}} = \frac {e^{-E_{rel}/RT}} {\sum_{k=1}^{N_{total}} e^{-E_k/RT} }$

The left hand side is the equilibrium ratio of conformer i to the total. is the relative energy of the i-th conformer from the minimum energy conformer. is the relative energy of the k-th conformer from the minimum energy conformer. R is the molar ideal gas constant equal to 8.31 J/(mol·K) and T is the temperature in kelvins (K). The denominator of the right side is the partition function.

Read more about this topic: Conformational Isomerism

Famous quotes containing the words equilibrium and/or population:

“They who feel cannot keep their minds in the equilibrium of a pair of scales: fear and hope have no equiponderant weights.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)

“What happened at Hiroshima was not only that a scientific breakthrough ... had occurred and that a great part of the population of a city had been burned to death, but that the problem of the relation of the triumphs of modern science to the human purposes of man had been explicitly defined.”
—Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)