a piece of stoney evidence

Here's one on the age-old subject of "are they really stones, or are they olive oil?"

I found a college lab procedure in organic chemistry for extracting pure cholesterol from human gallstones. The Gallstones were to be dissoved first in organic solvent, and the resulting solution was supposed to turn black, due to the presence of bilirubin.

Following something someone else did and reported on this forum, I melted a few of my stones into little puddles on the stove, and they did indeed have the exact color of olive oil, like the other guy said. But I did something he didn't: I put some drops of olive oil next to them and turned up the heat. Here's what happened.

Burner (electric) on level 2 or 3: stones (cholesterol) start bubbling; olive oil just sits there.

Burner on level 4 or 5: stones boil and liquid turns black (from bilirubin??); olive oil just sits there.

Burner on level 6 or 7: stones boil furiously down to nothing, leaving dark black stains on the aluminum foil; olive oil just sits there.

Burner on level 9: black stains where stones used to be burst into flame and burn with an ordinary yellow-orange flame for about 10 seconds. The olive oil is still just sitting there, a perfect little puddle of olive-green liquid.

Tweet