I saw that a molecule was trending on Yahoo, and how often does that happen? So I thought, “Here’s a challenge.” I went over to the wikipedia entry on paracetamol (aka acetaminophen) and copied the model into ball and stick form. It took about twelve minutes. This is what I got:

— [Record scratching noise.] Hold on, those carbon bonds don’t look right! Since when did carbon have five bonds? Well, before you scold me, take a look at what wikipedia has:

All the carbon bonds in the hex ring are single, which isn’t right either. Unless that dotted line inside the ring means something I don’t know, which (sigh) it probably does. (And now that I look at the darn thing, I realize that the double carbon bonds aren’t fixed, because all the atoms in the ring are carbon.)

Anyhow, then I looked at the skeletal formula, and put in the carbon bonds based on that.

First, here’s the wikipedia-given skeletal formula:

And then here’s my ball and stick based on it:

Which I hope is correct. Anyhow, this took me a lot more than twelve minutes because of the confusion.