What are the Basics of Isomers?

Isomers are organic compounds that have similar chemical formulas, but different structures.

So they have the same chemical formulas, it’s just a different structure of the atoms that are in that chemical formula.

For example, a molecule of butane has 4 carbon atoms and 10 hydrogen atoms. And so it can have two different structures: one is normal butane, which we can abbreviate to be n-butane, and then we have isobutane. And so n-butane is a straight chain structure, and then isobutane is a branched-chain structure, but both of these structures contain 4 carbon atoms and 10 hydrogen atoms. And so that fits very nicely into the definition we have here because this is an organic compound, it has similar chemical formulas, but just different structures. And so we call these isomers.

Now, we come to pentane, which has the structure of 5 carbon atoms and 12 hydrogen atoms. So here we can have n-pentane, isopentane, and neopentane. So now we have three different structures here: n-pentane, isopentane, and neopentane. So these are all isomers of each other because these all have similar chemical formulas, but they just have different structures. So that’s some of the basics of isomers.