How come acid doesn’t eat through glass like it does everything else?
In: Chemistry
This just has a lot to do with the actual ~~crystal~~ atomic structure of glass and how easy it is for the molecules in the acid to get in and break apart bonds in the glass molecule and also how willing the glass is to react with the acid. For some reason, most acids are bad at this. I don’t know the specifics myself since it was unimportant for my education in micro tech fabrication, but I *do* know that most acids that you know of actually do dissolve glass. They just aren’t very good at it. The most notable exception is hydrofluoric acid. It absolutely shreds through glass and, coincidentally, will do the same to your bones so it’s not exactly a safe chemical under normal use.
Hydrochloric acid (one you’ve probably heard of) is ~10x slower than hydrofluoric acid at eating away glass at the same concentration. And really, most other acids just do worse from then on.
The question is basically the same for any other material. In most cases, many solids really only have one acid that is particularly good at dissolving it. Not that there aren’t more than *can* do it, it’s just that there is usually a clear best.
Edit: glass isn’t crystalline (well, at least for the glass we are talking about here)
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