Based in Brazil, Fernanda Ferreira is a science writer who covers a range of STEM (and occasionally non-STEM) topics, from textile conservation to vaccine stockpiles.
Much of the earthy taste of rye bread is due to caraway seeds. These seeds get their flavor from carvone, a molecule made up of 10 carbon atoms, 14 hydrogen atoms, and one oxygen atom. But earthy isn’t the only taste that exact collection of atoms can create. The minty taste of spearmint is also due to carvone. Which flavor you get depends on the spatial distribution of the atoms in the molecule; if you placed both carvones side by side, you’d see them as mirror images of each other.
The study of the spatial distribution of atoms in a molecule is called stereochemistry. Alison Wendlandt, the Green Career Development Assistant Professor of Chemistry at MIT, explains that when it comes to molecules, it’s not only the atoms that determine molecular properties, but also the very three-dimensional arrangement of the similarly connected atoms.
