• Question: how do you tie a molecule?

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      Asked by anon-288034 to David on 24 Mar 2021.
      • Photo: David August

        David August answered on 18 Mar 2021:

        A very good question. Unlike your shoelaces, molecules don’t experience friction so any loose ends will untie immediately. So all of our molecular knots are complete loops with knots in them. We usually arrange different strands of the molecule using metal ions and then connect all of the loose ends together. After that, we can remove the metal ions to give the knot. There are some very good videos here: http://www.catenane.net/pages/2020_molecular_5_2_knot.html

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