Beta-carotene
File sealed
The detectives are still writing this one up. The poster and the facts are below; the film and the interrogation room open soon.
Booking photographs
The suspect, from its real atomic coordinates. Drag to turn it. Height chart in nanometers, ruled every 0.1 nm. A large carrot is about sixty million times longer.
Rap sheet
- Answers to
- Beta-carotene. Named after the carrot.
- Height
- 3.0 nm, standing up straight.
- Weight
- 0.89 zeptograms
- Color
- Orange. Hides in green leaves until fall.
- Marks
- Eleven double bonds in a row. They make the orange.
- Associates
- Lycopene, the red in tomatoes. Same atoms, until plants curl its ends into rings.
- Habits
- Cut in half, it makes two vitamin A.
- Origins
- Carrots were purple or yellow for centuries before orange.
- Last seen
- A 5 mL tube marked CARROT in the fridge at HQ.
of them in an 8 oz glass of carrot juice, on average.
You’ve never seen one.
The poster on the street
This is the photocopied wanted poster for Beta-carotene, No. 41. They were made for noticeboards around Boston, Cambridge and the rest of the east coast.
Found one? Scan its QR code with your phone. If you're a signed-in player, the sighting goes on your record with +1 XP.
Not a player yet? Join the Epic Quest: the real role-playing game of Molecular Reality, a nanopore lab, with the CEO as gamemaster.