Sunday, August 2, 2009

Questions on chapter 1 of Nelson

I hope you are enjoying chapter 1 which I emailed around last week.
I have posted two items on my condensedconcepts blog about it. Now, that I can post
on this one I will start posting here.

What questions do you have?

What do you think the main points were?

Maybe someone could find a good youtube? video of
-reverse osmosis
-a molecular motor

1 comment:

  1. An interesting protein/motor complex which is talked about to death in biology circles is ATPsynthase. It is important in our bodies as it forms vital step in converting the energy we consume as food and converting it to the universal energy currency of the body ATP. Interestingly if uses a H+ (hydrogen) gradient (with both a charge and concentration component) to turn a mechanism which combines ADP with a phosphate group forming a high energy bond and a molecule of ATP. So from a physicists point of view unfavorably high entropy on the H+ side of the membrane is being reduced while increasing entropy on the other side of the membrane in the production of ATP which is then removed from the immediate system so no equilibrium is reached.
    It was hard to find a video I liked but I settled for one with a better explanation rather than a more visually appealing one.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y1dO4nNaKY

    ReplyDelete