What is "bromochlorofluoromethane"

n. (context organic compound English) A halogenated hydrocarbon, CHBrClF, that is used in some fire extinguishers; its chirality is the basis of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahn-Ingold-Prelog%20rules

Bromochlorofluoromethane or fluorochlorobromomethane, is a chemical compound and trihalomethane deriative with the chemical formula C H Br Cl F. As one of the simplest possible stable chiral compounds, it is useful for fundamental research into this area of chemistry. However its relative instability to hydrolysis, and lack of suitable functional groups, made separation of the enantiomers of bromochlorofluoromethane especially challenging, and this was not accomplished until almost a century after it was first synthesised, in March 2005, though it has now been done by a variety of methods. More recent research using bromochlorofluoromethane has focused on its potential use for experimental measurement of parity violation, a major unsolved problem in quantum physics.