how something can dissolve metal but not plastic?
In: Chemistry
Because of what is required to dissolve it! Basically, acids and bases take advantage of properties metals exhibit and can oxidize them (has to do with the ways metals become stable with fewer electrons). Plastics don’t have the same ability to oxidize (all plastics have carbon, carbon HATES losing electrons), so they will be more resistent.
You can think of it like this:
A male peacock (acid or base) can successfully attract a mate (metal) using its mating rituals (ability to remove an electron), but it does absolutely nothing for chicken hens (plastic). The ritual impacts the birds (material) differently because they think and behave differently.
The ELI5 is: “Different things react differently to different things.”
That’s why iron + water = rust, but plastic + water = wet plastic.
Plastic and metal are different. You may think of metal as “strong” and plastic “weak” but these words are meaningless in chemistry and materials science.
It is incredibly easy for a chemical to attack most metals, because they are reactive. On a chemical level, they don’t want to exist on their own. Oxygen from the air or chloride from hydrochloric acid will gleefully bond to those metal atoms.
Plastics being long chains of carbon are very stable. Carbon is electrically neutral so it isn’t really attracted towards oxygen or ions but with the right conditions it can still be made to react.
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