Reactions

Chirality is Just Turtles All the Way Down

L-DOPA is the best drug we have for Parkinson’s disease. If you take L-DOPA and reflect it in a mirror, you get a different molecule: D-DOPA, which does absolutely nothing for Parkinson’s and causes potentially deadly side effects. Making just L-DOPA without D-DOPA is surprisingly hard – so hard that the person who finally figured out how to do it won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Chirality is Just Turtles All the Way Down

12m 2s

  • Chirality is Just Turtles All the Way Down: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Chirality is Just Turtles All the Way Down

    S10 E8 - 12m 2s

    L-DOPA is the best drug we have for Parkinson’s disease. If you take L-DOPA and reflect it in a mirror, you get a different molecule: D-DOPA, which does absolutely nothing for Parkinson’s and causes potentially deadly side effects. Making just L-DOPA without D-DOPA is surprisingly hard – so hard that the person who finally figured out how to do it won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

  • Science Doesn't Understand How Ice Forms: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Science Doesn't Understand How Ice Forms

    S10 E6 - 10m 31s

    This video contains incredible macro footage of supercooled water droplets nucleating ice. All George wanted to do was make a crystal-clear ice cube. Instead, he ended up rediscovering dendritic crystal growth, a beautiful phenomenon first described in the 17th century. You’ll never look at your freezer the same way again.

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