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tanarillSo I figure that I ought to tell you people what I have been doing for the past two weeks, but I am not going to. Instead, I will deluge you with Science!
I am taking a class right now called Inorganic chemistry. In chemistry, "organic" means molecules built with lots and lots of carbon, like most of the molecules in your body, and inorganic refers mostly to metals.
Thing is, most metals occur as ions (they have + charge) and are not terribly stable when mixed up in water (which is what you are, water-bag). So they form these things called "coordination spheres," which make them more stable but are confusingly not spherical. Their actual shape is like an octahedron. The metal sits at the very center; if you drew a line from each tip to the one opposite, the metal atom would be at the intersection of the three lines.
What's on the outside, you may well ask. In water-bag solution, the metal will grab water molecules and stick those at the tips, so it's one metal and six water molecules. When water is held this way we call it a ligand. If the metal lets the water go, it stops being a ligand and goes back to floating around. But most metals can't hold on to water too tightly, and they grab other molecules to be ligands if they can. The strongest ligands are cyanide and carbon monoxide, which are incidentally also highly poisonous. This is related.
See, although most of the chemicals in your body are organic, enzymes often have one metal stuck somewhere in there. The point of this metal is, in fact, to bind things as ligands and hold them there so they react. It's a lot like a pot, which does not actually heat the eggs when you are hard-boiling them, but still has to be there to hold the water. The rest of the enzyme is organic, and wraps around the metal so that there is exactly one of those six possible ligand sites available. And, when these metals bind the correct chemical in that last site, well . . . as an example, hemoglobin works this way: the iron binds an O2 or a CO2 and moves it around, but they are not so tightly bound that you can't yank them off when they get to where they were going. Everything is happy.
But carbon monoxide and cyanide don't let go. Ever. And this is a bad thing when you need those hemoglobin irons to be carrying oxygen around. A little carbon monoxide is okay, since your body can and does replace all your hemoglobin every three months or so. A lot will kill you, even if you are rushed to the hospital and put on an oxygen feed - not because there is no oxygen, but because there is nowhere for the oxygen to go. Cyanide works along the same lines, the difference being that unless you are inhaling it, it binds other enzymes and keeps your body from doing Important Things that way. Of course, your body will be able to tell it's there and eventually filter it out . . . assuming you're not already dead.
Isn't Science! cool? :D
I am taking a class right now called Inorganic chemistry. In chemistry, "organic" means molecules built with lots and lots of carbon, like most of the molecules in your body, and inorganic refers mostly to metals.
Thing is, most metals occur as ions (they have + charge) and are not terribly stable when mixed up in water (which is what you are, water-bag). So they form these things called "coordination spheres," which make them more stable but are confusingly not spherical. Their actual shape is like an octahedron. The metal sits at the very center; if you drew a line from each tip to the one opposite, the metal atom would be at the intersection of the three lines.
What's on the outside, you may well ask. In water-bag solution, the metal will grab water molecules and stick those at the tips, so it's one metal and six water molecules. When water is held this way we call it a ligand. If the metal lets the water go, it stops being a ligand and goes back to floating around. But most metals can't hold on to water too tightly, and they grab other molecules to be ligands if they can. The strongest ligands are cyanide and carbon monoxide, which are incidentally also highly poisonous. This is related.
See, although most of the chemicals in your body are organic, enzymes often have one metal stuck somewhere in there. The point of this metal is, in fact, to bind things as ligands and hold them there so they react. It's a lot like a pot, which does not actually heat the eggs when you are hard-boiling them, but still has to be there to hold the water. The rest of the enzyme is organic, and wraps around the metal so that there is exactly one of those six possible ligand sites available. And, when these metals bind the correct chemical in that last site, well . . . as an example, hemoglobin works this way: the iron binds an O2 or a CO2 and moves it around, but they are not so tightly bound that you can't yank them off when they get to where they were going. Everything is happy.
But carbon monoxide and cyanide don't let go. Ever. And this is a bad thing when you need those hemoglobin irons to be carrying oxygen around. A little carbon monoxide is okay, since your body can and does replace all your hemoglobin every three months or so. A lot will kill you, even if you are rushed to the hospital and put on an oxygen feed - not because there is no oxygen, but because there is nowhere for the oxygen to go. Cyanide works along the same lines, the difference being that unless you are inhaling it, it binds other enzymes and keeps your body from doing Important Things that way. Of course, your body will be able to tell it's there and eventually filter it out . . . assuming you're not already dead.
Isn't Science! cool? :D
