[Limpet Chicken]

I have been  trying to produce 3-methylindole, the stinky chemical found in erm...organic mud-pies shall we say, I have tried this by addition of 100ml of a 50% aq. soln. of NaOH to about 300 ml of a mixture of the white of one egg and water. The solution is then shaken violently for some time by hand and left for three hours, when there is a layer of coagulated albumen and a NaOH layer which I think contains the 3-methylindole in solution,
On addition of just over half an equal amount of boiling hot aq. HCl this seperates into three layers, a clear one at the bottom that I presume contains the remaining HCl, then an albumen layer of eggy refuse, and finally on the top there is a watery layer with a fine brown precipitate which I think is my 3-methylindole-HCl.

Can anybody help, I need to find a way to test my product to find out if it is what i think it is, I unfortunately cannot just sniff for the s#*$-smell, as I have lost almost all my sense of smell  

[Mitch]

Are you sure the egg doesn't have to be rotten to start with?

[Donaldson Tan]

Can anybody help, I need to find a way to test my product to find out if it is what i think it is, I unfortunately cannot just sniff for the s#*$-smell, as I have lost almost all my sense of smell  

Haha.. same problem.. Lab work in school plus a sensitive nose equates to a loss of an acute sense of smell

[Limpet Chicken]

I have actually lost most of my nasal capacity, Ican only smell really stong s#*$ like chlorine and burning sulfur/ammonia. Unfortunately, I can now sniff away to my hearts content at the bigbottle of ammonium sulfide in my lab, and only smell a slight pong, it's enough to drive my mates out of the lab as soon as I take the top off.  

But no, I don't think the eggs have to be rotten, mere alkali hydrolysis is supposed to be adequate. I tried this, and with a HCl gassing as per standard *grins* an now the s#*$ has seperated into three layers, and the others have been filtered off, leaving the (hopefully) 3-methylindole. If it has worked, then it's going to prove mighty useful

[Corvettaholic]

let me know how that turns out, cause if it works I'm gonna try and reproduce your experiment. I could definantly use some spare shi... 3-methylindole.

[Limpet Chicken]

I think the experiment has been a success, I have just to dry out the brown flakey precipitate (which is what 3-methylindole is supposed to look like I believe) too bad I just can't smell it to find out for sure   apart from making a most unholy commotion (or is that just motion?)
amongst the neighbors, 3-methylindole, and indeed indoles in general have some most interesting uses IMHO.

[jdurg]

I was thinking at work the other day wondering if it would be possible to make s#*$ in a chem lab.  Take some food and mush it up with some enzymes found in saliva, then digest it with HCl and enzymes found in the stomach, and just process it like the body would.  Eventually you remove some water from the mixture and you're just left with synthesized poop.  If you get a grant for the research and they ask for results, even if you didn't succeed you could always just crap in a beaker and show it to them.  lmao.  

[Limpet Chicken]

Does anybody know the boiling point of skatole? I feel one of those moments coming on where you do the sometimes dreadful things that only a truly mad scientist would dream of, can anyone guess what my experiment is going to be? heh heh heh lol, a litle re-cycling will help the planet out, maybe hep up for all the nasty fumes pouring out of my lab lol