Ethyl formate
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 0.05 nm. A drop of vinegar is about ten million times wider.
Rap sheet
- Answers to
- Ethyl formate. Aliases: ethyl methanoate, formic ether.
- Height
- 0.48 nm, standing on end.
- Weight
- 0.12 zeptograms
- Build
- Eleven atoms. Its formic half is named after ants.
- Known for
- First caught in space, in a star-forming cloud near the middle of our galaxy.
- Associates
- Hydrogen, which outnumbers it nearly 300 million to one.
- Suspected
- Of being assembled on specks of cosmic dust.
- Habits
- Lies low down here in fruit, bread, cheese and mussels.
- Last seen
- A 5 mL tube marked SHERRY VINEGAR in the fridge at HQ.
of them in a tablespoon of sherry vinegar, very roughly.
Vinegars vary. You’ve never seen one.
The poster on the street
This is the photocopied wanted poster for Ethyl formate, No. 61. 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.