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Finding the Weight of DNA in a Human

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Calculate the weight in grams of a double-helical DNA molecule stretching from the Earth to the moon (~320,000 km). The DNA double helix weighs about 1 x 10^-18 g per 1,000 nucleotide pairs; each base pair extends 3.4 Ã.... For an interesting comparison, your body contains about 0.5 g of DNA!

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Solution Summary

In this solution we take a word problem dealing with some dimension of a DNA strand. We figure out how to calculate the weight of DNA necessary to stretch from the moon and back to earth, and we compare this value with how much DNA humans actually have. Don't miss this one if DNA is confusing you!

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à is the angstrom, the same as 100 picometers. 10^10 angstroms is 1m, so let's change the 3.4 angstroms to km first

3.4 angstroms * 1m/10^10angstroms * 1km/1000m = ...

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