What is this?

[aznswimmerxc]

It was on the side of the VBI (Virginia Bioinformatics Institute) building at Virginia Tech, I'm really carious about what this is..

 

 

If you guys need more pictures I can post more!

 

Thanks

[yojoe]

It appears to be: 3,5,7-trihydroxy-2-(3,4,5-trihydroxycyclohexyl)-octahydrochromen-4-one

[John Cuthber]

I wonder if they were trying for this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphinidin

[chemfan]

It is interesting see it in the building.

[DeanK2]

The correct name of this compound is 3,5,7-trihydroxy-2-(3,4,5-trihydroxycyclohexyl)-octahydrochromen-4-one. Yojoe knows his nomenclature

[Jules7890]

I doubt they were trying for that one, John Cuthber. The one on the webpage is missing an oxygen.

 

But that is really interesting ... I wish I knew what the significance was!!

 

They probably just want to confuse nerds.

[iNow]

Perhaps it's a riddle?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

It's another incident of nerd sniping:

 

 

http://xkcd.com/356/

[John Cuthber]

"The one on the webpage is missing an oxygen."

No, the structure on that wiki page is correct for delphinidin. The one on the building is some obscure stuff that nobody seems to have heard of. I still think they tried to put up an image of delphinidin, but messed up.