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According to me this molecule does not have any any plane of symmetry nor centre of symmetry, but in my textbook it is given that this is optically inactive. enter image description here

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    Then your textbook is wrong. Or maybe they mean a racemic mixture. – Ivan Neretin Mar 07 '21 at 08:54
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    Please provide a reference for your textbook and some context. Also, the name in title doesn't match the structure (which is 2-ethyl-3-methyloxirane). – andselisk Mar 07 '21 at 08:55
  • I am sorry, I have edited it. Thanks! It was a question in the book "Advanced Problems in Organic Chemistry for JEE" By Himanshu Pandey –  Mar 07 '21 at 10:35
  • You may draw the structure in a chemistry-aware search engine like Chemspider. With title structure as sketched, omitting stereochemical information like here you see there is discern about the stereogenic centres to be either in RR, RS, or SS configuration. One points to this noting chiral resolution. – Buttonwood Mar 07 '21 at 11:14

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Both oxirane carbon atoms are optically active, because both contain 4 different substituents. The left one has a methyl group, a hydrogen atom, the other oxirane carbon atom and the oxygen atom from the oxirane ring. The other oxirane carbon has the following substituents: a hydrogen, an ethyl group, the oxirane oxigen and the other oxirane carbon. I assume the author of the textbook made the mistake to count the oxirane ring as one functional group, and overlooked that this one functional group functions as two substituents.

Conrad Fritzsche
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