Monday, 25 May 2009

All in the Balance

I spotted this cache today when looking for things local to the area in which I planned to spend the day (I visited the Cathedral of Learning - more later). Remembered it when I got back in the evening and thought I'd attempt to solve it.

The first parts were reasonably easy once I remembered what the involved. I'm pretty confident in my S, K and F.


The next part, I continue to struggle with. I've got as far as:


I know that 1 mole of nicotine is 162.26g and 1 mole of O2 is 32 grams.

I think then that:


Update - Writing this just made me notice a mistake I made right at the end. I just solved it (@22:42)!! (Well, I have an answer that passes the verification).

I'll carry on now...

So I need to balance that with the appropriate ratio of oxygen. The number I have on a scrap of paper here is:


...but I think I've now just doubled that to get the answer? Hmmm... not sure how confident I am in my final answer now :) All these numbers on my paper make for a confused Saffy.

Using the fact that 1 mole = 32g. I can calculate that the above number of moles (doubled) times 32 gives me the weight of O2 in grams. Convert that to milligrams and lose the decimal places to get a three digit number for the cache coordinates:


Anyone care to check my chemistry/maths? It's a long time since I've done anything like this! A good challenge - did I actually once know how to do this stuff?

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