While on his way home from a concert by Ann Arbors own Bob Seger at Pine Knob,
Question:
While on his way home from a concert by Ann Arbor’s own Bob Seger at Pine Knob, during his visit to Michigan, world famous Inspector Sgt. Nigel Ambercromby was called in from Scotland Yard when the body of Ian Shoemaker, an English businessman, was discovered outside his home at 6 A.M. the morning of April 1st. Mr. Shoemaker was in the process of investigating why there was money missing from the chemical engineers’ pension fund on March 31st. He met individually over coffee with each of the four employees who had access to the fund on March 31st, to confirm his suspicions before he pressed charges. However, the guilty one must have discovered Shoemaker’s suspicions beforehand and wanted to keep their identity secret by murdering him.
During the autopsy the coroner determined Mr. Shoemaker was poisoned by a chemical known as Iocane powder. Iocane stops the heart from beating and is virtually undetectable, but it decomposes in the blood to form the detectable compound Optoid, according to the reaction Iocane + RBC → Optoid Because of the high concentration of red blood cells, CRBC, the rate law between Iocane and the red blood cells can be modeled as a pseudo first-order reaction in terms of the concentration of Iocane, CA,
-rA=kA′CRBCCA≅kACA
The coroner told Inspector Ambercromby that during the autopsy at 11 A.M. on April 1st, he found that the concentration of Optoid was 0.01 mol/dm3. According to his calendar, Shoemaker had meetings the previous day, March 31st, at the following times:
These four individuals are now the prime suspects. Iocane is available over the counter as a rat poison in powder capsules, each containing 18 g (56.25 g/mol), and a capsule could have easily been put in Shoemaker’s coffee.
Additional information:
Assume the poison goes virtually immediately into the blood.
a. Calculate the initial concentration CA0 of Iocane in the blood in gmol/dm3 after ingesting one capsule.
b. Knowing CA0 and the concentration of Optoid at 11 A.M., calculate the time Shoemaker was poisoned. Whom should Ambercromby arrest?
c. After calculating the time the poison was put in the coffee and arresting the alleged killer, Shoe-maker’s wife mentioned that Shoemaker was running a fever of 311.7 K (101.4 F) that morning. Knowing Shoemaker had a fever, do you think Nigel arrested the right suspect? If not, whom should he arrest?
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