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Description:

AP Biology 2.3 Evolution. What did the Urey-Miller experiments do?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

Here’s your shmoop du jour, brought to you by ‘50s era science. [Man using a chainsaw to relieve a man's headache]

00:08

Back when cigarettes cured cancer!

00:10

Okay, here’s our question. [Man smoking a cigarette]

00:12

The Urey-Miller experiments…what?

00:15

And here are the potential answers. [mumbling]

00:21

Endless theories suggest how life may have begun on earth.

00:23

Be it a benevolent creator, an asteroid, or even a giant spaghetti monster. [a giant spaghetti monster in a populated street]

00:29

But Urey and Miller tried to show how organic life could start without religion or sentient

00:35

noodles.

00:36

In 1952, they filled a flask with carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and sulfur dioxide. [chemical substances added to a erlenmeyer flask]

00:43

And in the tradition of all great mad scientists, they zapped it to life with electricity.. zapped it until it tried to come[frankenstein monster zaps an erlenmeyer flask with electricity and breaks]

00:52

to life.

00:54

After the experiment was complete, they discovered the flask now contained amino acids. [erlenmeyer flask with amino acids]

00:59

The point was not to start with organic molecules...

01:02

As a matter of fact, all of the component molecules were deader than Eddie Murphy’s

01:07

film career.

01:08

And Urey and Miller didn’t quite produce prokaryotic cells.

01:11

They weren’t full-on Frankensteining. [Erlenmeyer flask shatters and turns green]

01:14

But just because they didn’t raise a man from the dead, you definitely wouldn’t call

01:17

them unsuccessful.

01:18

Quite the contrary.

01:20

The experiment is considered a landmark piece of research indicating that organic life,

01:25

under the right conditions, could have begun inorganically. [Rocks in a puddle and a turtle appears]

01:28

They’d provided a theory for the origin of life, without a single reference to witchcraft

01:33

or ancient aliens.

01:35

That means that B is the correct answer.

01:38

Anyone else craving spaghetti? [Lots of men with forks chasing a spaghetti monster]

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