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Can a compound be achiral even if it does have a chiral center?

Answer 1

The short answer is YES.

I invite you to look up #"meso"# compounds. These are symmetric #RS# compounds, which, upon inversion, give the #SR# isomer, which is superposable on #RS#. Such compounds are optically inactive.

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Answer 2

Isabella Acosta

Yes, a compound can be achiral even if it has a chiral center if the molecule possesses an internal plane of symmetry or an inversion center that cancels out the chirality introduced by the chiral center.

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Answer from HIX Tutor

When evaluating a one-sided limit, you need to be careful when a quantity is approaching zero since its sign is different depending on which way it is approaching zero from. Let us look at some examples.