Motor- vehicle officials in Seattle are seeing red over a black 2002 Audi bearing the license plate?

C9H13N.

That character string is the chemical compund for the illegal drug methamphetamine. "It's pretty easy for something like this to slip through," said state licensing official Brad Benfield. "With a series of letter and numbers, if you're not a chemist, it doesn't ring a bell."



Can you determine the structural formula of metamphetamine from its molecular formula?Motor- vehicle officials in Seattle are seeing red over a black 2002 Audi bearing the license plate?Methamphetamine's molecular formula would be C10H15N, I think. There will be a lot of different molecules with that molecular formula - so no, you couldn't necessarily tell if C10H15N was referring to methamphetamine. It's probably the best known chemical with that formula, though.



An alternative representation might be:



PhCH2CH(Me)NHMe



Ph means phenyl (a benzene ring or C6H5) and Me means methyl, CH3.



and that would unambiguously be amphetamine, but I don't think you'd get it on a license plate.