Observations by Watson and Holmes. Holmes’ inferences | Disciplinary Content |
Mirrortown | The city refers to a mirror, which will be related at the end of the story to the mirror image of enantiomers. |
“Left-hand gloves” and “right-hand gloves” | R and S enantiomers of the compound precipitated in wine (tartaric acid). These molecules are, like hands, non-superimposable mirror images in the plane. |
Twin brothers | R and S enantiomers. In many cases, one of the two may be harmful to health (see the Annex) |
“Liike two peas in a pod, but one had a bitter taste while the other was sweet.” | The racemic mixture, with both enantiomers: seemingly identical, but the subtlety of the spatial configuration of the substituents gives them different properties. |
“his actions (Sydney’s) that embarrassed poor Marcus” | The racemic mixture that causes an unwanted effect (See the Annex for the case of thalidomide) |
Marcus (good brother) | One of the two enantiomers, in this case, the one that has no harmful effect or the one that has a beneficial effect on health,, if we extrapolate it to the medical plane to be taught. |
Sydney (irascible brother) | One of the two enantiomers, in this case, the one that has a harmful effect on health, if we extrapolate it to the medical plane to be taught. |