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ammonite · Boot Joined: 28 Apr 2005 Posts: 49

[puzzle] Silver - #248 - Differently Lethal

**Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2005 8:12 am

lillyplop · Boot Joined: 17 Oct 2005 Posts: 52

I wonder if this is a toxin or a disease? Like Ebola or Arsenic?

Another silver card to sweat and bleed over and still get nowhere!

**Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2005 11:24 am

ammonite · Boot Joined: 28 Apr 2005 Posts: 49

The only thing I've got so far is noting that the numbers indicate the position in the square like this
12

4 -3

-12
And wondering if you have to construct a 3-D map (the relative size of the spheres showing how deeply they lie on that axis)

Like your virus idea. Ebola virus looks like this

according to the Googlenet.

At least its a new silver to go mental over. I'm bored of going mental over Elucidate.

**Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2005 11:48 am

lillyplop · Boot Joined: 17 Oct 2005 Posts: 52

I did not so much mean a diagram of or picture of the disease. I have seen during films like Outbreak or Medical Dramas or even CSI (my favorit show by the way) where they drop some blood or saliva into a petrie dish and hey presto machines start to whir and out pops a little peice of paper with lots of dots and numbers on it indicating what is in the sample. A certain combination of dots indicate what virus or disease they are battling.

Bit like the paper you dip into chemicals and it changes colour to show how acidic or alkaline a product is.

Dont know if I am explaining this properly but I hope so. Confused

**Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2005 5:20 pm

Curlytek

Looks like Kurt has got a feel for chemistry in these latest releases...what with molecular and this card, which I am about 99.98% sure is a crystallographic diffraction pattern. The question is of what, alas crystallography is not my specialty but I should be able to solve this at Uni during next week.

**Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2005 7:42 pm

The First Speaker · Boot Joined: 18 May 2005 Posts: 55 Location: UK

This is definitely a crystallographic diffraction pattern.
Found this site with a download for Mac that looks to be the program used to generate the image:

http://www.crystalmaker.com/singlecrystal/index.html

Unfortunately, I don't have a Mac so can't run it!!

Anyone out there want to download it and have a play around?[/url]

**Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2005 8:37 pm

_________________
"If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be: Has Perplex City card #238 been solved?"

spugmeistress

i can do that
definitely looks like it'll help!
any ideas what to do with it once i download it?

rach =)

**Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2005 9:00 pm

The First Speaker · Boot Joined: 18 May 2005 Posts: 55 Location: UK

Ooooo exciting!!

I was having a look to see what u could try with the program and noticed you can download a demo for XP!!

I'll give it a go now too Smile

**Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2005 9:05 pm

_________________
"If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be: Has Perplex City card #238 been solved?"

spugmeistress

since i dont really know how you can put stuff into the program to see if it would identify what we have, at the moment, i've downloaded it and it came with example files so i'm just going through them to see if any match

edit: nope, none of them. thought to be fair, i'd have been disappointed if it was ;)
i have no idea what i'm looking at!

rach =)

**Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2005 9:09 pm

Curlytek

The structure is unlikely to match any of the examles. I'd say that the numbers associated with the dots are coordinates, I would say we will need to generate our own input file using those coordinates. I can check with the crystallographers in my department on Monday to see if they have any wizz-bang ways of doing this (to be honest, they may even be able to get a good idea of the structure by eye).

The symmetry could be important, looks like the pattern has an inversion centre, at the central (largest) point, and the pattern can be rotated by 180 deg. about an axis coming out of the page (two fold symmetry)

**Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2005 9:17 pm

spugmeistress

but if we input our own dots arent we just going to end up with the same picture as we have now? Because I can't see that the program would actually be able to analyse the inputted picture and tell us what we were looking at, although I could be wrong.

As for the co-ordinates, since there's three numbers I'd guess that the third one was to do with the size of the dot rather than any 3d space?

Even though the examples don't match I was thinking it might give us an idea of our crystal and how its composed compared to other (named) diagrams that are similar/different. But I really have no clue.

rach =)

**Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2005 9:41 pm

Curlytek

Let me try to explain.

You take a compound, a drug, mineral, any chemical. You get it to crystallise. You hit it with X-rays. The atoms in the crystal are lined up in such a way as to create numerous planes, with different spacing between them. Because of this, the X-rays (that have a certain wave frequency) will bounce off of these planes if they obey the Bragg diffraction law. What we are looking at is a diffraction pattern, a representation of the way that the X-rays diffract off of different planes of the crystal. We need to convert the diffraction pattern to a crystal structure, like what you would have been looking at in the program demo you downloaded. The numbers, I'm pretty sure, are a,b,c coordinates (3D coordinates). I just am not an expert in converting between the diffraction pattern and the structure (my PhD is in electrochemistry....only managed to get two structures in my time, but didn't solve them myself).

**Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2005 9:57 pm

tomkirkman · Greenhorn Joined: 25 Nov 2005 Posts: 5

von's hint:

**Posted:** Sat Nov 26, 2005 6:58 am

ramsfan

That links to both a film and a game. I noticed that anthrax was mentioned.

**Posted:** Sat Nov 26, 2005 8:50 pm

_________________
The best therapy is shrink rapped

Curlytek

Could someone with the card please list the numbers going down the 'columns' of dots from left to right? Just so I can be sure which coordinate relates to which dot, as there are distinctive, well aligned columns in the representation shown (it is slightly ambiguous, to me, how to order the dots from left to right, top to bottom)

*I sure hope I get this card in my first lot of Perplex city cards!*

**Posted:** Mon Nov 28, 2005 12:31 am