Describe the role of ¹⁵N in the Meselson–Stahl experiment.

Video transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to today's video some metal soon and stop. Use the heavier isotope of blank in their experiment because it can be separated from blank by C. S. L. Based density gradient centric fication. What key aspect of this experiment is that they use nitrogen. Now if we look at an isotope and we see something like this, the number here represents the mass of the isotopes. So the higher this number is the heavier the isotope is going to be. So remember that since they use nitrogen we can eliminate answer choice is C. And D. Now, which one is the heavier isotope that we can put here is the N. 15 or is the N. 14? It is going to be in 15 because it has the higher mass. So that's what we're going to right here. And then in this answer choice, we're going to put the lighter isotope which is in 14 and that is going to be represented by answer choice. I really hope this video helped you and I hope to see you on the next one.