Weekend question: Which molecule is on Randy's avatar?

[biom]

Which molecule is on Randy Holmes-Farley avatar?

a) Ammonium cation
b) Phosphate anion
c) Sulfate anion
d) those are just lollipops :face-with-hand-over-mouth:

And please elaborate why. (I mean why do you think this is correct answer, not why Randy chose this avatar :)

 

[Dan_P]

Which molecule is on Randy Holmes-Farley avatar?

a) Ammonium cation
b) Phosphate anion
c) Sulfate anion
d) those are just lollipops :face-with-hand-over-mouth:

And please elaborate why. (I mean why do you think this is correct answer, not why Randy chose this avatar :)

There is a couple ways to figure this out.

A molecule exists that is of special interest to Randy. It plays an important role in human health and reef health which interests Randy in his professional life and his private life, respectively. ANSWER: phosphate

If I did not know much about Randy, I would first notice that the atoms seem to follow the CPK model color convention for phosphate. Here on R2R we aren’t required to follow that convention, so, better to take a closer look. In an enlarged image of the molecule, one can see a double bond. Sulfate has two double bonds, ammonium none. Answer: phosphate

 

[jda]

Just a guess, but B... when somebody once indicated that he needed to study about phosphates, he responded that he helped create drugs to control/regulate/lower phosphates in humans that sold millions of pills or millions of dollar and that he was an expert in phosphate metabolism... or something close to that.

I don't know anything about lollipops or binds, but this is just based on clues that the human has posted.

I normally am quite content with reading, thinking, remembering and posting, but this is once case where I with that I had the link to this post. :)

 

[A Young Reefer]

my guess would be B due to the presence of one double bond, unlike A that has non and C that has 2.

 

[Nick_Turbo]

It is B) PO43- You can tell this because the molecule shown is a trivalent inorganic anion, of which the other two are not.

THANK YOU for allowing me to utilize too many years of college chemistry courses that have since become useless!

 

[biom]

Thank you all for the answers. I am really impressed - all correct answers - yes it is phosphate because of one double bound visible, and the CPK color coding. Maybe next time will try something not that easy for example which chemical element is on @JimWelsh avatar :))))

It is B) PO43- You can tell this because the molecule shown is a trivalent inorganic anion, of which the other two are not.

THANK YOU for allowing me to utilize too many years of college chemistry courses that have since become useless!

Welcome to R2R! IME this part of the forum will give you many opportunities to utilize your chemistry courses :)

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I love phosphate! :)

FWIW, it isn't actually the way the Chem 3D (at least at the time years ago) showed phosphate. It is actually phosphoric acid with the hydrogens not showing. That way the double bond shows.

Modeling phosphate, where the double bond is really spread out over all of the oxygen atoms, making them all equivalent leads to a 3D structure that is just a tetrahedron and might be other things, such as methane. Wikipedia shows that here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphate