why erasing colored pencil is harder than erasing normal pencil?

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I think this depends on what they put inside the pencil lead but I wanna know more

In: Chemistry

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Normal pencils use graphite for their core. Graphite is quite brittle so that it is possible to break it apart and rubb it off a surface with the right tools. However graphite is very dark and does not really bond to much else which can be used as coloring pigments. So color pencils do not use graphite at all but rather wax. The wax can be mixed with pigments to make out the different colors. However unlike graphite the wax is very maluable and will just smear out if you try to erase it. The wax also have other properties you might want in a pencil such as being easier to write with on wet surfaces, does not produce dust and is non-conductive.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Normal pencils, such as the standard #2 or HD varieties, use a “lead” that is composed of clay and graphite. (Contrary to urban legend, real lead was never used in pencils). The graphite creates the blackish color, while the clay makes the graphite softer and stickier, so it sticks to the paper.

Colored pencils use a lead made of wax with pigment embedded. The wax sticks to paper differently than the graphite/clay mixture does, meaning that a regular eraser won’t work on it. They do sell special “erasable” colored pencils that can be erased with a special eraser.