Am I the only one who never heard of protons functioning outside the nucleus except maybe when an atom disintegrates? Could this phenomenon lead to a different fuel cell?
OK, OK, I'm not a physicist but I thought all reactions occurred in the valence shell.
Am I the only one who never heard of protons functioning outside the nucleus except maybe when an atom disintegrates? Could this phenomenon lead to a different fuel cell?
OK, OK, I'm not a physicist but I thought all reactions occurred in the valence shell.
I'm a relative newbie to this biology stuff so I, too, have been amazed at the kinds of "biomachines" that exist at the molecular level. Turns out, the proton pump is a very old, very basic machine of living things. Check it out:
As for what takes place in the nucleus of atoms: when I took basic chemistry, I was told that isotopes were chemically identical to each other but only differed in their mass. Recently I learned that biological systems can be very sensitive to the differences in those masses and that "isotopic fractionation" is quite common in living things. When it comes to chemical bonds, you essentially have masses and springs. When you have differences in the masses, you have differences in the way the molecules vibrate, and some chemical reactions are very sensitive to the modes in which those vibrations take place. So, long story short, living things are not necessarily blind to what's going on in the nuclei of atoms.
Ok I could be wrong here but when you have a single proton such as this case it is technically a Hydrogen atom which only has one proton. I know in chemistry when they say to add a proton to the atom or molecule they mean to force it to react with a hydrogen since it only has one electron it can give up or accept another hydrogen to fill its valence shell.
Something that is really fascinating is the cascade effect or nerve cells have by using K+ and Na+ ions to shift the charge within the cell and send information down to the axon to release a chemical signal for the next neuron.
I'm not a medical student, nor studying any diciplines of Life Science, but I admit that molecular biology is very interesting! However, I did studied some basics of those proton pumps and stuff. I got to learn some more of these applications of the pumps when I studied Neurobiology in my most final semester. (Btw, I was an engineering student)
There are new so-called "biologically inspired systems" which is in the engineering world nowadays. One of them is the famous Artifical Neural Networks.
"isotopic fractionation"? I am awed that successive atomic shell electron limits are 2, 6 10, 14 etc. I'm equally awed by the paradox that is the speed of light. We are apparently a long way from discovering the ultimate limits of subatomic complexity. It makes me wish I could 'learn' faster than I do.
ElectricAye
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This shows that God, is a hobbyist as well.
I think yours might spin a little faster than mine. What's your secret? :smilewinkgrin:
-Cool!!
OK, OK, I'm not a physicist but I thought all reactions occurred in the valence shell.
I'm a relative newbie to this biology stuff so I, too, have been amazed at the kinds of "biomachines" that exist at the molecular level. Turns out, the proton pump is a very old, very basic machine of living things. Check it out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_pump
It's used by bacteria, for example, to move around.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellum
As for what takes place in the nucleus of atoms: when I took basic chemistry, I was told that isotopes were chemically identical to each other but only differed in their mass. Recently I learned that biological systems can be very sensitive to the differences in those masses and that "isotopic fractionation" is quite common in living things. When it comes to chemical bonds, you essentially have masses and springs. When you have differences in the masses, you have differences in the way the molecules vibrate, and some chemical reactions are very sensitive to the modes in which those vibrations take place. So, long story short, living things are not necessarily blind to what's going on in the nuclei of atoms.
Something that is really fascinating is the cascade effect or nerve cells have by using K+ and Na+ ions to shift the charge within the cell and send information down to the axon to release a chemical signal for the next neuron.
There are new so-called "biologically inspired systems" which is in the engineering world nowadays. One of them is the famous Artifical Neural Networks.