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AP Biology 2.3 Evolution 50 Views
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Description:
AP Biology 2.3 Evolution. What did the Urey-Miller experiments do?
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]
Full Transcript
- 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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