From Newsgroup: rec.puzzles


The newsgroup Alt.trivia.chemistry appears to be rather moribund
so I am cross-posting to R.puzzles. If chem isn't your specialty,
feel free to present the challenges to your favorite AI chatbots and
post your successful prompts here.

(1) What is the significance of this transformation?
6 (CO2) + 6 (H2O) --> (C6H12O6) + 6 (O2)

(2) In what way(s) is the expression in (1) misleading?

(3) Complete this septet:
79, 47, 26, 80, 50, 29, ??

(4) We don't need the following sequence in its entirety.
The first 10 or 11 list elements are enough.
8, 6, 1, ??, 20, ??, 16, 19, 11, 17, ??, ...


Cheers,
James
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From Newsgroup: rec.puzzles


James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> posted:

The newsgroup Alt.trivia.chemistry appears to be rather moribund
so I am cross-posting to R.puzzles. If chem isn't your specialty,
feel free to present the challenges to your favorite AI chatbots and
post your successful prompts here.

(1) What is the significance of this transformation?
6 (CO2) + 6 (H2O) --> (C6H12O6) + 6 (O2)

(2) In what way(s) is the expression in (1) misleading?

ChatGPT pretends to enjoy puzzles.
With no human here participating, I submitted the puzzles to ChatGPT.
It did an excellent job with (1) and (2). I gave no prompting beyond
the text here and

How are you at puzzle solving?
The only clue is that chemistry is inolved.

(3) Complete this septet:
79, 47, 26, 80, 50, 29, ??

ChatGPT almost solved this but wrote

but I don't yet see a unique seventh term.
If you can tell me where the puzzle came from,
or whether there were any formatting quirks, we may be able to crack it.

i supplied some simple hints; It then solved the puzzle, noting that

the ordering is not arbitrary. It follows the traditional association of ...

(4) We don't need the following sequence in its entirety.
The first 10 or 11 list elements are enough.
8, 6, 1, ??, 20, ??, 16, 19, 11, 17, ??, ...

Perhaps primed by (3), the Chatter solved this one immediately.

Cheers,
James

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From Newsgroup: rec.puzzles


James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> posted:

The newsgroup Alt.trivia.chemistry appears to be rather moribund
so I am cross-posting to R.puzzles. If chem isn't your specialty,
feel free to present the challenges to your favorite AI chatbots and
post your successful prompts here.

(1) What is the significance of this transformation?
6 (CO2) + 6 (H2O) --> (C6H12O6) + 6 (O2)

This is the famous operation of *photosynthesis*, the essential activity of
all plants, algae and cyanobacteria. The carbohydrates and oxygen it
produces are also vital for almost all animal life. A somewhat more
complete depiction of this reaction is:
48(h++) + 6(CO2) + 6(H2O) + 3(ADP) + 3(PO4) --> (C6H12O6) + 6(O2) + 3(ATP) This shows 48 photons arriving from the chlorophyll light-harvesting arrays. The photons provide energy for the reaction; some of the energy is spent preparing approximately -#3 molecules of ATP.

(2) In what way(s) is the expression in (1) misleading?

The transformation shown above appears to imply that each CO2 input produces
an O2 output, but when experiments with a rare oxygen isotope are done, the oxygen is shown to derive from the H2O input. The photosynthesis reaction actually proceeds in two separated catalyzed systems, PSII then PSI.


PSII:
24 (h++) + 12 (H2O) --> 24 (H+) + 24 (e-) + 6 (O2)
PSI:
24 (h++) + 6 (CO2) + 24 (H+) + 24 (e-) --> (C6H12O6) + 6 (H2O)

As shown, each hydrogen atom is separated into proton and electron which then proceed on separate paths.

The summary depictions omit the complex catalysts which facilitate the reactions. For example, PSII is facilitated by the *oxygen-evolving complex* (Mn4 Ca O8/10 H6/8) which operates as a complex state machine. Mn (manganese) was "chosen" for this state machine because it has the most oxidation
states of any common metal. During the oxygen synthesis, each of the
four Mn atoms passes through multiple states.

(3) Complete this septet:
79, 47, 26, 80, 50, 29, ??

(4) We don't need the following sequence in its entirety.
The first 10 or 11 list elements are enough.
8, 6, 1, ??, 20, ??, 16, 19, 11, 17, ??, ...

Cheers,
James

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