Question

How do I estimate the optical roation of an (S)-enantiomer if I know the optical rotation to the (R)-enantiomer?

For instance, for limonene, after conducting an experiment, I got that the optical rotation for the (R)-enantiomer was 10, would the (S) be -10?

Any help would be great.

Answer 1

Yes, the R and S forms are the negative of each other.

Answer 2

If your rotations are Sepcific Rotations (do a Google search for the definition] then DrBob is correct. If your R and S samples are of different concentrations or the path length is different, then you would need to calculate the expected rotation.