this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
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Holy crap that burn looks bad - i hope its mostly edited.
Anyway, can someone explain this for a normie?
I think it’s saying that estrogen has more double carbon bonds, so it’s more stable as a molecule
It has basically an entire benzene ring, one of the most stable structures in chemistry.
That's an overstatement, but it is extremely stable compared to most things in solution.
Not much of an overstatement tbh.
It's stable in terms of solute chemistry, compared to other crystalline stuff it can be much weaker.
Oh sure, we're talking solids at that point haha.
It's been a while since I took organic chemistry, but isn't that literally just a benzene ring?
Meh, it's a benzene ring but with the hydroxyl and other groups on, it is a diminished benzene ring, the inter-ring bonds aren't quite as stable as a pure aromatic ring.
Has to do with the electron bonds having slightly longer lengths than in their 1.5 configuration. The difference is prety minor.
Not quite. The other person is right about the benzene ring, but also testosterone has a non-aromatic double bond, making it less stable because in organic compounds double bonds are more reactive than single bonds.
Cheers
In organic chemistry, there's a concept called delocalized pi orbitals. The exact reason why it works is complicated and outside the scope of organic chemistry, so I'm not sure if I can really explain it anyways. But the takeaway is that when you see a double bond, single bond, double bond pattern, that generally indicates that the bonds are actually being shared across the entire motif. ie, it's not really a double bond, it's more like... a 1.5-bond.
Having the bonds be shared across multiple atoms gives that region of the molecule special properties, the primary of which is that it tends to be really stable. The reason for that is that any disruption toward that region (eg, adding an electron) gets distributed across the motif, so that each atom is only minorly disturbed.
And the bigger the motif is, the more stable the region is because it's able to distribute disturbances better.
Benzene (the hexagon motif circled) is made exclusively of this double bond, single bond, double bond motif. And as a result, it's well known for being extremely difficult to modify or destroy. You really have to jump through hoops to do any sort of organic chemistry with benzenes. The motif circled in testosterone still has delocalized pi orbitals, but it's not as extensive as a benzene, and so it's less stable
Thanks! That's concise and really interesting
Something about boats and hos
I like to hoboat my motors, for sure
Oh man, the lower half of this image was everywhere ten odd years ago. Or maybe longer. Shit.
It’s just “Oooooh, burn!” in a sarcastically distant tone. Almost like it’s a daily occurrence.
I never quite liked it even if it looks very fake. The particular stab at humor it went for didn’t really do it for me.