Precipitating salt from water with olive oil?

We had a tube of water with salt dissolved in it, then we added olive oil and mixed it up. After a while the oil was at the top and you can see the salt in the olive oil and no longer dissolved in the water. Can you explain how this works? And how this relates to protein shape?Precipitating salt from water with olive oil?
When a protein is formed in a cell, it is produced as a ';string'; structure that complements the sequence coded by RNA. After exiting the ribosome, it spontaneously folds into its three-dimensional structure because of hydrophobic interactions.





The environment within cells is mostly aqueous - but some of the amino acids that form proteins are hydrophobic and do not dissolve well in water. These hydrophobic amino acids collect together to form the inside of the protein, and nearly every amino acid surrounding the outside of the protein will be hydrophilic (this can vary if the protein will be placed in a hydrophobic environment, such as transposing a membrane in the cell). But for the sake of simplicity, most of the proteins that are produced have a hydrophilic (';water-loving';) exterior.





In your experiment, the olive oil is hydrophobic (literally, afraid of water). So after forming an emulsion (vigorous mixture) with the water and salt, the oil separated because its most thermodynamically stable form is to be separated from water. The same explanation goes for understanding protein shape.Precipitating salt from water with olive oil?
First - there is no protein in olive oil. Olive oil consists of a type of compound known as triglycerides, which are tri-esters of fatty acids with glycerin.





Second - The salts did not get concentrated in the inter-phase layer between the oil and the water. More than likely you were seeing what emulsion chemist refer to as a ';Rag Layer'; between the oil and the water.
Well, oil isn't bondable with water, so it makes sence that they would seperate, and salt stays in the water, it just breaks up into smaller particules, so maybe the salt molecules better lock with some of the particules in the oil, then in the water. Just a guess.