Watch These Videos
The following video provides some background information about molecules, along with some hints about How Scientists Know About Molecules. Videos below tell more about how we know molecular structures. Try to get the gist of each video, and don't worry if there is some terminology you do not understand.
(NB: rough order: chemistry: effects of EMR on molecules and what it tells us -- IR spectra; X-ray crystallography; cryoelectron microscopy)
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Electromagnetic radiation (EMR) of different wavelengths affect molecules in different ways, revealing different kinds of details about their structure. The methods are called molecular spectroscopy.
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IR spectroscopy makes a fingerprint of a molecule by causing it to vibrate in many different ways in response to many different wavelengths of IR waves.
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Most of the structures of very large molecules (called macromolecules), such as antibodies and enzymes, have been learned by interpreting patterns that result from diffraction of X-rays by crystals of proteins. This video shows you what such diffraction patterns look like, and how they allow scientists to build models of proteins. This method is called X-ray crystallography. (This video is silent.)
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The 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was for work done to make images of all sorts of molecules, whether they can be crystallized or not. Watch this video from Chemical and Engineering News to see how scientists obtain models of the largest molecules. This method has recently overtaken X-ray crystallography in the sheer number of new molecules visualized. The method is called cryoelectron microscopy.
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Obtaining images of biomolecules in their many alternative shapes has led to models of how they move, so that animations can be made, and simulations of their motions can be tested for their accuracy.
No, the molecules do not make cool, electronic noises or music when they more. For you, do those sounds alter your view of the models? How?
Animations like these are both science and art. Do they give you reasons to "reject the feud of eye and intellect"?
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If you know some organic chemistry, you can use this tool to build and manipulate models of molecules:
Model of ethyl alcohol built with
Click image to enlarge.
