Math and Chemistry: Detecting Chirality of Molecules

The fields of topology, chemistry, and molecular biology have each made tremendous advances in the past thirty years, and as a result, there are more and more potential ways that topological techniques can be used to understand molecular structures. For example, a molecular graph is topologically achiral if it can be continuously deformed to its mirror image; otherwise, it is topologically chiral. This property is related to the chemical chirality of molecules. The goal of this math-chemistry combined project is to show how topological techniques can be used in chemistry to detect chirality. Some 3D modeling techniques will be used to explain the results to the audience for a better understanding.