Legend has it that Cleopatra , the last queen of Egypt, has made a bet with Mark Antony in order to demonstrate his power and his wealth to spend 10 million sesterces for a single meal.
"He ordered it to be served the second course. According to previous statements, the servants would place in front of the queen one tray containing vinegar ... She took an earring, and dropped the pearl vinegar. And when it broke up entirely, swallowed it down. "This contention is Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia.
According to Pliny, the pearl was not just a gem, but" the biggest of all history , a remarkable and unique work of nature ", worth 10 million sesterces. But despite the episode has been deemed credible by the ancient historians have always considered fictional.
Dando, however, benefit of the doubt to the ancient sources, Prudence Jones Montclair State University in New Jersey has created a cocktail with vinegar and a 5-carat pearl, to find out if the concentration acetic acid may be sufficient to dissolve the calcium carbonate of the pearl.
"Enough of vinegar and a pearl. In my experiments I used the vinegar sold in supermarkets, and took 24 to 36 hours to dissolve a pearl weighing about one gram. The process left of the small residue of gel-like material on the surface, "says Jones. "The Pearl of calcium carbonate reacts with acetic acid of vinegar to produce calcium acetate, water and carbon dioxide."
He continues: "The calcium carbonate neutralizes the pearl of the supply, so the drink is not normal acid like vinegar." The experiment has also refuted the idea that has always considered the episode as fake. We relied on the fact that only super-concentrated vinegar would dissolve a pearl. "A higher concentration of acetic acid slows down the reaction," says Jones.
In other experiments, it was shown that when the pearl is chopped and boiled the vinegar, the reaction takes less than 10 minutes to end. "In the accounts of Pliny, time is compressed, since a large pearl take more than 24 hours to dissolve completely. But the result, pearl destroyed, and money spent drinking cocktails, it is plausible."
Adrienne Mayor, dlela Stanford University researcher, is of the opinion that the experiment demonstrates the plausibility of the event: "I believe that this research has demonstrated the technique that Cleopatra could have used to dissolve a pearl. We already know that this queen curious and intelligently made toxicological tests. And 'likely to have' softened 'the pearl in advance, and then chop it and place it in a cup to impress Mark Antony of his wealth and his knowledge. "
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