how something can dissolve metal but not plastic?
In: Chemistry
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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