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One of the questions in my book has answer given as one mirror plane of symmetry perpendicular to the 3-fold rotation axis, but I think it has 3 more, each parallel to the 3-fold rotation axis as I have attempted to show below.

enter image description here

Chloritone_360
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  • This picture is really bad... and not useful. – Mithoron Nov 05 '18 at 17:18
  • Gah, I just deleted a comment about it, because @A.K. already told it in his edit, and now question isn't unclear, but is telling something you hadn't known... – Mithoron Nov 05 '18 at 17:54
  • I would speculate that the ring has a twist to it which would mean it has no mirror symmetry. Either way you are either right and the answer is wrong or you are both wrong and the molecule has a twist in it. If it were Barrelene, then I would agree you have additional mirror planes, but more information is needed. – A.K. Nov 05 '18 at 19:19
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    Even if the bridges aren’t flat, they are conformationally flexible enough such that on a sufficiently long timescale they behave as if they are flat. Whether that counts as being a mirror plane is up to interpretation... see eg https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/q/61107/16683 Here the barrier to “flipping” is definitely much lower than in the cyclohexane case. – orthocresol Nov 05 '18 at 19:35
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    @orthocresol I guess that depends on what you want to do with the mirror planes. – Zhe Nov 05 '18 at 21:16

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