The takeaway is that the silica / silicate in the glass acted as the silica in the rocks and gave a more closer to real-life scenario, so it solidifies the original experiment even more, while noting that the original authors did not intend this.
what I mean is, how do they know that's what helped the reaction? The other two flasks were of a different material, but the same as each other. How do they know that material A aided the reaction as opposed to concluding that material B impeded it?
If Teflon impeded the reaction but borosilicate did not help it, then the two Teflon flasks would have had identical results. They didn’t have identical results, therefore logically one can conclude that borosilicate has a beneficial effect.
Yes, it would take more experiments to further explore the role of the vessel material.
This is how science works in general; someone gets an idea and runs a limited experiment and gets results. Then other people, seeing the results and understanding the limitations, get their own ideas and test those.
What I’m trying to say is that you’re not wrong to say there is more to test here. But, it’s not a fatal flaw to this experiment. All experiments have limits to what they can prove.
> This finding supports the authors' original hypothesis. Corrosion on the surface of the glass (due to the hot and caustic water circulating through it) plays a key role, since this releases silicon-dioxide molecules into the solution. This in turn acts as a catalyst to speed up the chemical reactions between the nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen atoms that ultimately create organic molecules. In addition, they found that the corrosion on the glass also forms millions of tiny pits. The authors think those pits could serve as tiny reaction chambers, also speeding up the rate at which organic molecules form in the experiment.
1. It's known to be a catalyst in the chemical reaction
2. They believe that the tiny pits in the corroded glass also speed up the reaction. This could explain why the material of the flask matters.
That sounds like they had a hypothesis, did an experiment, the experiment matches their hypothesis, so they came up with a reasonable explanation why. But if noduerme had done the same experiment with the hypothesis "life can't form in the presence of Teflon" the experiment would have also confirmed his hypothesis, and he would have given you a reasonable explanation why that is.
It would have been more convincing/thorough if they had also tried e.g. a steel and a silicon carbide reaction flask.
If it is not the case that the Teflon + glass pieces run gave a result between the other two, perhaps the next step would be to run the experiment again in the glass vessels, but with pieces of Teflon in them. If Teflon is neutral, the results should match the glass-only run.
The Teflon flask with some borosilicate did have a lower ending PH than the flask with only Teflon. Assuming the authors ruled out other potential sources for that reduction, then one must conclude that borosilicate had an effect.
Yes, the pure borosilicate flask had a much greater effect, but there was also much greater surface area for the solution to work on.
An interesting experiment might be to see if the reduction in PH levels scaled with the amount of borosilicate added to the solution. They may have done that in the paper, but that'd settle the question you posed.
