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I recently saw this:

"Go out and have an (chemical) rush on your birthday!!"

What chemical does this formula represent?

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2 Answers 2

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The structure represents adrenaline or 'epinephrine' (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epinephrine). As in:

Go out and have an adrenaline rush on your birthday!!

The image on wikipedia has a slightly rotated ring, so doesn't look identical.

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You can easily search for chemical structures online. Just one example is ChemSpider. It has an online editor in which you can draw the structure. You can also upload images.

Always make sure to compare the resulting molecule with your original structure to see if it's exactly the same.

But yes, it's adrenaline/epinephrine.

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  • $\begingroup$ Nice advice, however that last one about exact comparison might be misleading to chemistry beginners. $\endgroup$
    – mykhal
    Commented Apr 29, 2017 at 3:49
  • $\begingroup$ Good point. I just want to warn against overseeing for instance an additional OH group, or miscounting the number of C atoms; mistakes easily made and leading to a completely different molecule. However, as gilleain already mentioned in his answer, one molecule can indeed be displayed in several ways. This depends on the viewing angle, and the orientation of the atoms in space (the "conformation") that can change by rotating around single bonds. Basically just check if all the atoms are linked in the same way. $\endgroup$
    – kappi
    Commented Apr 29, 2017 at 12:32

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