Saturated Fatty Acids are illustrated with stearic (octadecanoic acid, 18:0) in Panels 1 & 2 and palmitic (hexadecanoic acid, 16:0) in Panel 3. In Panels 1 & 3 the structures are in the all staggered conformation, and the symmetry of this conformation as compared to that of the structure in Panel 2 can be seen by rotating the structures so that you are looking down the long axis of the molecules. The all staggered conformation has the lowest energy, but the energy difference between it and the conformation of the hydrocarbone chain shown in Panel 2 is not large. The conformation shown in Panel 2 is the results of a molecular dynamics simulation run at 25^o C in vacuo on the all staggered stearic acid. The result of this simulation shows that even at room temperature the energy is available to over come the barrier to rotating to another conformation. The conformation shown in Panel 2 or a multitude of similar looking ones would be more likely to be present in a natural setting than the all staggered conformation. The structures of other common saturated fatty acids - arachidic (eicosanoic acid, 20:0), myristic (tetradecanoic acid, 12:0) and butyric (butanoic acid, 4:0) - would differ from the above structures only in the length of the carbon chain.