How come acid doesn’t eat through glass like it does everything else?
In: Chemistry
Basically, think of acid like…students in school.
Susy, she is a whiz at mathematics. A train leaves Denver at 9AM traveling 59 Miles per hours, so how many apples does Joey have if his brother meets the train in Albuquerque? She knows. It’s her thing.
Jose? He only knows he has 8 fingers and 2 thumbs because he was told. Can’t do mathematics to save his own skin…but can spell Tetraethyllead in three languages. He knows. It’s his thing.
Acids are just like that, they have tasks they’re good at and not good at. Some acids, like hydrofluoric acid, it ***does*** eat through glass. To store it, it has to be stored in certain plastics or lead. Pour it in a glass bottle and in a while you don’t have a bottle, you have a funnel; it’ll eat the bottom of the bottle away. Pour it in a polyethylene (plastic) bottle? No problem. Indefinite storage life.
So, you have to know what the acid you’re dealing with does. How it interacts with other materials. Not every acid can be stored in glass. Not every acid can be stored in plastic.
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