I’m Doctor John Moses. I’m climbing Wales’
highest mountain. Going to head up there and
when we get to the top we’re going to make
a molecule called cisplatinum.
It’s an inorganic complex and it’s used
clinically to treat many forms of cancer very
successfully.
Well my group and I thought we’d have an
adventure weekend and we thought let’s combine
it with our passion for chemistry and the
outdoors and when we get to the top of Snowdon
we thought let’s do something quirky and
make a molecule to show how easy chemistry
is to do anywhere.
I have lots of family members who had cancer,
been affected by cancer, my own mother passed
away from cancer and a lot of my research
group’s family have been affected by cancer.
So we think it’s a worthy cause and it gives
you some inspiration to do the science.
Okay not too bad, a bit wet though.
Well, we chose cisplatinum because it’s
fairly simple to make because it’s rather
a simple molecule and we can make it in water,
and as you can see from this weather that
becomes a bonus. Whereas lots of other organic
molecules are sensitive to water so combining
water and chemistry is not always good, it
can be good fun. It was discovered in the
mid-nineteenth century but became involved
in cancer therapy in the late ‘70s. And
it’s been very successful, it just shows
that something quite simple can have a huge
effect on society, so that’s really why
we chose that molecule. And also because some
of the organic natural product based molecules
are so complicated to make and we’d probably
be here several weeks making them, so we can
get cisplatinum out in a couple of hours hopefully,
maybe less.
We chose Snowdon because I’m Welsh, from
North Wales. I’ve spent a lot of time up
here as a young man, a young boy even. And
I love this countryside I wanted to take my
group up to somewhere which is very familiar
to me, so it’s quite personal to me, as
is the chemistry, so we chose Snowdon as a
great location.
We’re on top of Snowdon the highest point
in Wales.
How does it feel?
Great! A little bit cold, but great.
It’s pretty comfortable in here.
We’re just setting up the experiment and
James and Sally, as you can see in the tent,
are setting up the equipment ready, so they’re
organised so they can get straight into it
and not fumble around. Chemistry in the clouds,
absolutely. I think it’s the highest chemical
reaction done in Wales I’m guessing, I don’t
think this has ever been done before.
At the moment we’re just dissolving the
starting material which is potassium tetrachloroplatinate.
We’re making a molecule called cisplatinum.
It’s an inorganic compound and here’s
a structure of it, well a molecular model
of it even. So there’s the platinum, the
metal at the centre of the complex. And here
we have two chlorides and two ammonia ligands.
So the chlorides are cis to each other, that
means they are the same side, and the ammonia,
the two ammonia groups are also on the same
side hence ‘cis’ the same sides. And this
is it, quite a simple molecule, square planar.
The first step is the addition of a saturated
solution of potassium iodide.
Brilliant, just proud of my students you know
that they can do chemistry in the most extreme
environments.
Pretty uncomfortable, I’m not going to lie.
It’s pretty stony under here we should have
brought a cushion with us.
Okay we’re dipping it in hot chocolate because
this is the hottest thing we have up here,
we want to speed the reaction up a little
bit.
Here we should see the ammonia is displacing
two of the chloride ligands.
Lighten my load for the way down.
Thanks very much, that’s very kind of you.
Thank you Sir. There you go, let’s see your
famous face.
People have been quite generous, on the way
up we’ve had a lot of donations off some
very nice people and a lot of nice people
have donated on our website too, so got to
thank everybody. Yeah really, really good.
Okay so this is the final compound here, this
is cisplatinum. And there’s quite a lot
of it as well. Excellent yield.
What’s next?
What’s next? Well I think we’re going
to do stage two. We’re going to have to
do some more chemistry somewhere a bit more
extreme: maybe higher up or maybe lower down,
let’s see.
