[Sca-cooks] Ground glass and seagulls (was A 210 carat pearl.........)

[Diamond Randall]

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>This explanation assumes simple chemistry, and does not take into account
>temperature, speed of dissolution, or many other things.  Perhaps the best
>way to do this is to try dissolving a pearl in some wine!
>Diego
So speaks the chemist.  Now the gem merchant has a few questions.
WHERE pray tell are folks going to find a 30mm pearl to experiment
with?  Are you nuts?  A 30mm natural sea pearl is still VERY costly, even
the irregular or poorly colored ones.  You certainly can't use cultured
pearls as they have a core of a quite different type of calcium carbonate.
Also do you expect a real pearl to dissolve like Fizzy tablets (sorry infants,
gramps will explain fizzies later) when placed in a glass of vinagarish wine?
Certainly not.  It is obvious that Cleo most likely destroyed the pearl by
pounding it to powder first in front of Caesar.  MUCH more impressive
as it precludes recovering the pearl through a more alimentary methods
later.
Kids, PLEASE don't try this at home.  If the pearl you powder happens
to be one of the older fake pearls with a glass core, you will subsequently
kill yourself by drinking ground glass.  This will cause you to bleed to
death through your ruined small intestines.
As to Fizzies, they were a late 1950 craze like a sparkling Koolaid.  They
however were found to be dangerous when young kids swallowed
tablets without putting them in water beforehand.  Rather like feeding
seagulls Alka-seltzer tablets, but fortunately not fatal as kids can burp
(seagulls can't), so it was only very painful (seagulls explode).

Akim


--- Diamond Randall
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