When we eat food how powerful is the acid in our stomach, is it powerful enough to kill a life? For example, if someone ate goldfish or shrimp alive. How does it work, do the acid kill them immediately or they die slowly.
In: Biology
In movies a little bit of strong acid dissolves metal or flesh in seconds. In shows they have different chemical reactions that look dramatic, like water-soluble foams carefully painted as props.
In real life, a strong acid will react, make lots of bubbles, foam, and gradually dissolve things. Highly concentrated strong acids can quickly cause permanent damage to sensitive tissues like eyes and skin, but that’s very different from death. Even something that breaks apart quite quickly, like gold into aqua regia, generally takes about a day when accelerated with heat and agitation when dissolving a very small bar. Vultures have extremely powerful acids in their stomach and it takes more than a day to break down things like sheep ribs.
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