I present to you a photograph of a heap of crystalline dl-mandelic acid—racemic mandelic acid, easily obtainable by chemical synthesis from benzaldehyde or some other common precursor. mandelic acid, C6H5CH(OH)COOH, is a chiral molecule; that is to say, it has an asymmetric carbon center in it which is capable of existing in two configurations that are chemically equivalent but distinct mirror images of each other. ordinary methods of chemical synthesis that start from achiral (i.e. symmetrical) precursors do not favor the production of one chiral configuration over another; hence they yield racemic mixtures, like this dl-mandelic acid here, containing 50% of each enantiomer.
I suggest that this substance, or some other organic substance that's easily obtained in racemic form, can be used as currency.
does that sound ridiculous? let me attempt to explain.
it is possible to "resolve" racemic mixtures. dl-mandelic acid contains two substances, mirror images of each other, in equal balance: d- or dextro-mandelic acid, and l- or laevo-mandelic acid. the prefixes stand for "right" and "left", and refer to the rotation of plane polarized light—for if a chiral substance is illuminated with plane polarized light, it will cause leftward or rightward rotation of the plane of polarization. the racemic mixture, with its 50-50 balance of enantiomers, will do nothing to a beam of polarized light. but if the dl-mandelic acid were to be partly "resolved", i.e. if it contained more of one enantiomer than the other, we'd be able to estimate the ratio in a simple fashion, by preparing a solution of the mandelic acid of known concentration and then determining optical rotation in a polarimeter. the degree of resolution or separation between d-form and l-form is called the enantiomeric excess, in chemistry, and one can determine "ee" for a mixture of chiral enantiomers in a fairly low-tech, straightforward fashion.
I propose that we have here a basis for a currency, a medium of exchange, in which the value of the "currency" is equivalent to the enantiomeric purity of an ordinary substance, like mandelic acid. obtaining racemic mandelic acid, with 0% enantiomeric excess, is easy; obtaining enantiomerically pure mandelic acid in significant quantity is difficult. I suggest that we have here something equivalent to the "mining" that cryptocurrency addicts seem to think their blockchain thingummies are simulating, even though I think they're full of [expletive deleted] in that regard. trying to purify a substance is far more like mining than merely thrashing a lot of GPUs to death.
mandelic acid may be a bad starting point because it's a bit too common perhaps. how would you resolve it? there's different approaches—different methods of "mining", you could say. you could even try making a chiral mandelic acid directly through "asymmetric synthesis". a relatively simple if tedious way would involve recrystallization, using a mandelate salt of another chiral molecule, such as a chiral amine (a natural substance, perhaps.) one can gauge success and measure the "value" of the chiral currency with polarized light.
so, what do you think? good idea? crazy idea?
~Chara