Kekule's Benzene Structure: A Case Study of Teaching Usefulness of Symmetry

Authors

Olga Kosheleva, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Vladik Kreinovich, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow

Publication Date

8-2014

Comments

Technical Report: UTEP-CS-14-58

Published in Applied Mathematical Sciences, 2014, Vol. 8, No. 144, pp. 7183-7194.

Abstract

Benzene is one of the basic building blocks of organic molecules. One of the reasons for benzene's ubiquity is its unusual ring structure first discovered by Kekule in 1865. In this paper, we show that a simple symmetry-based analysis can narrow down possible benzene structures to three ring ones, including the Kekule's ring. Thus, Kekule's benzene structure provides a good pedagogical example on which one can explain usefulness of symmetries.