Question

Draw a labeled diagram of the experimental setup of Urey and Miller.

Answer 1

Hint: The Miller-Urey experiment was a classic experiment performed to explain the origin of life. It was fundamental in establishing that the primitive earth’s atmosphere was capable of producing the building blocks of life from inorganic materials.

Complete answer:

Stanley L. Muller and Harold C. Urey conducted an experiment where they established that the conditions that existed in the Earth’s primitive atmosphere were sufficient to produce organic molecules like amino acids. Their experimental setup was as followed:
-Miller and Urey filled sterile flasks with chemicals to which the glass tubes were attached.
-One of the flasks was half-filled with water and in another, a pair of electrodes were used.
-Above the water containing flask, a moist environment by water vapors was created into which methane, hydrogen, and ammonia gases were introduced.
-The heat due to primitive lightning discharges were stimulated by supplying the system with the electrical supply.
-Due to the heat, the emitted gases dispersed throughout the apparatus, mimicking the atmosphere of the earth. The water in the flask reflects the water on the surface of the planet while the water vapor is similar to the one that evaporates from the seas and lakes.
-After a few days, Miller observed the presence of certain organic compounds like amino acids in the flask. The amino acids are the ones serving as the essential building block of proteins which are one of the four biomolecules of the living world.
-Using various detection experiments, they confirmed the formation of amino acids like glycine, alanine, glutamic acid along with some other organic compounds like urea, lactic acid, succinic acid, etc.

Note: -Miller and Urey observed that around 10-15 percent of the carbon was in the form of organic compounds and 13 amino acids were produced by 2 percent of carbon.
-They performed this experiment in 1953 to test the combined hypothesis of Oparin and Haldane about the early Earth.