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Will Coke Dissolve a Nail? (2003)

joshmadison.com

61–70 of 105 posts

Re: Will Coke Dissolve a Nail? (2003)

#61
post #7

"To illustrate that, the email points out that Coke can be used to clean a toilet, help remove a rusty bolt, or remove blood from a highway accident." Yeah well why would anybody believe that if a soda can be used in such ways that it is also bad for you? I mean I flush the toilet with water! With WATER! And it removes most traces of excrement... Arg, it must be bad for you!

your stomach is packed with hydrocholoric acid at a pretty mean pH of between 1 and 3 anyway.

Re: Will Coke Dissolve a Nail? (2003)

#62

I remember when my mom wanted to teach me not to drink soda when I was young, that it was bad. So to show it was bad for the tooth's she took one of my tooth I lost and put it in coca cola. And after a couple of weeks (don't remember the time exactly, but it was quite long time) it had dissolved to just some goo at the bottom of the glass :)

This would happen with a great many things your mom was probably fine with you drinking. This is why you have saliva and swallow things. It's also why you augment that with brushing your teeth. If you're holding coke in your mouth for more than a few seconds, you're doing it wrong.

Re: Will Coke Dissolve a Nail? (2003)

#63

> The steel nail and keratin nail were examined under the 8x loupe and notes were made about their appearances. Gee, a simple metric might've been just to measure the mass of the nail before and after.

I was going to suggest this as well. For an experiment that otherwise goes to great lengths to look scientific, this is a rather simple-minded blunder.

Re: Will Coke Dissolve a Nail? (2003)

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, please drink half a litre, or even better 2 litre of vinegar and report back to us how that went. or to reverse it - do you know anybody drinking coke in same amounts as usage of vinegar when pouring over salad?

I actually drank a little more than .5 liter of white vinegar as part of some experimentation with those "miracle fruit" tablets ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synsepalum_dulcificum ). Other than a few minutes of burping, I experienced no ill effects. Edit: Ok, wanted to make a correction after thinking more about that day: My consumed amount was likely around half that. I was consuming various other oddities during…

wow OK, I stand corrected. I always, wrongly assumed that more than tiny amount would make digestive system go crazy and probably cause vomit or other unpleasant consequences

Re: Will Coke Dissolve a Nail? (2003)

#65
post #7

"To illustrate that, the email points out that Coke can be used to clean a toilet, help remove a rusty bolt, or remove blood from a highway accident." Yeah well why would anybody believe that if a soda can be used in such ways that it is also bad for you? I mean I flush the toilet with water! With WATER! And it removes most traces of excrement... Arg, it must be bad for you!

Coke is used to clean a toilet and not flush it. To clean a toilet, generally some acid or detergent is needed. Effectiveness of Coke being used for this purpose shows its acidic nature and its ability to dissolve the material on which it is applied.

Then why not just check PH to prove acidity?

Re: Will Coke Dissolve a Nail? (2003)

#66
post #36
post #14

Hmm, results would be different if iron (not steel) nails would be used.

What do you mean by "iron nails"? Nalis are always low-grade steel with low carbon content, the rest is iron.

Most nails are made of steel. Aluminum, copper, brass, bronze, stainless steel, nickel silver, monel, zinc, and iron are also used. Galvanized nails are coated with zinc to give them added corrosion resistance. Blued steel nails are subjected to a flame to give them a bluish oxide finish that provides a certain amount of corrosion resistance. So-called cement-coated nails are actually coated with a plastic resin to improve their grip. Some brads are given a colored enamel coating to blend in with the color of the material they are fastening.

Source: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Nail.html

Re: Will Coke Dissolve a Nail? (2003)

#68
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still does not mean it is bad for you. Same holds for vinegar (it's acidic). Vinegar is not bad for you, at least when pored over your salad. In fact, only the dose determines the toxicity, it makes no sense to talk about toxicity with out discussing dose (or LD50 value or something.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison

yeah, please drink half a litre, or even better 2 litre of vinegar and report back to us how that went. or to reverse it - do you know anybody drinking coke in same amounts as usage of vinegar when pouring over salad?

I drink a lot of sour beers. The agent of souring is generally lactobacillus or pediococcus bacteria producing lactic acid. The pH of these is generally around 3, which is a little bit higher than vinegar. I've made some homebrew that is a bit lower - though it ended up being ab it too sour for my personal tastes. There have been plenty of days where I have had more than 2 liters of sour beer - many commercial bottles are sold as 750mL, and sour beers are generally relatively low alcohol %, so it's easily possible to drink plenty of these if you've decided you want to make a day of it.

About the only ill effect would be some heartburn. Tums to the rescue

Re: Will Coke Dissolve a Nail? (2003)

#69

> The steel nail and keratin nail were examined under the 8x loupe and notes were made about their appearances. Gee, a simple metric might've been just to measure the mass of the nail before and after.

Oh I thought of that, but only had access to a simple kitchen scale. The weight of the nail before the experiment didn't even register on it.

Re: Will Coke Dissolve a Nail? (2003)

#70
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Validates tome's law: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9077549

StavrosK's law: Nobody will take a law you invoke seriously if you're the one who coined that law.

I take you seriously, so the law must be true.
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