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Will Coke Dissolve a Nail? (2003)
- S_A_P 10y agoThere are acidic things considered healthy that people eat all the time. The problem with Coke and any other soda is the massive quantities of sugar, which has been proven bad for you.
- apatters 10y agoIn accordance with Betteridge's law, TL;DR: No.
- brownbat 10y agoAs discussed on Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/acid.asp http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/acid.asp
- mtmail 10y agoConclusion "As I suspected, no nail of any kind was dissolved by any of the sodas."
- Ir0nMan 10y agoMyth busted.
- Noseshine 10y agoRelevant? "Predicting if a Metal Will Dissolve in Acid" [0] as well as "Is Soda Acidic? – How Cola Impacts Digestion" [1] and "Why is phosphoric acid used in some Coca‑Cola drinks?" [2] > Short of drinking undiluted vinegar, cola is about the most acidic thing you can buy to > drink. The pH level of soda is approximately 2.5 (testing seems to come up with results > ranging from 2.3 to 3.5 but a pH of 2.5 is commonly cited... the acid usually is phosphoric acid and occasionally citric acid it seems. [0] https://www.boundless.com/chemistry/textbooks/boundless-chemistry-textbook/electrochemistry-18/standard-reduction-potentials-129/predicting-if-a-metal-will-dissolve-in-acid-516-7066/ https://www.boundless.com/chemistry/textbooks/boundless-chem... [1] http://flatulencecures.com/is-soda-acidic http://flatulencecures.com/is-soda-acidic [2] http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/faq/why-is-phosphoric-acid-used-in-coca-cola-drinks-diet-coke-coke-zero http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/faq/why-is-phosphoric-acid-used-i...
- DanBC 10y agoI'd be interested to see if raw phosphoric acid has much effect on nails. I'd also be interested to see if it's at all possible to dissolve a nail in coke - perhaps by heating the coke, agitating it, and using vast quantities over a long time?
- gambiting 10y agoI imagine that heating + constant stirring would yield better effects, but I don't think even that would be enough. Actually, if that strategy works, I'm willing to bet it would work with normal tap water too.
- Broken_Hippo 10y agoI'm guessing you would need to have a few controls - one plain "still" water and one carbonated water just to sort out the effects of those. I imagine it is possible so long as the nail is made of something prone to corrosion, but I'm not so sure it would be from the ingredients in the Coke as much as the exposure to water.
- VLM 10y ago"something prone to corrosion" Prone to acidic corrosion. Freshly machined stainless steel will rust unless its passivated in an acidic dip, you couldda chrome plated it but dissolving off everything not chrome ends up in about the same place. Another good one is aluminum as in aluminum nails, pre 1980s house siding was aluminum for decades before it switched to short life vinyl siding, and aluminum is mostly impervious to acids and reacts very strongly to alkali. Technically pure aluminum will melt away in either, but the oxide coating is stable in acids and dissolves in bases, so in practice aluminum is acid proof and alkali melts right thru it.
- BrentOzar 10y agoI am convinced that this whole post is a troll designed to get me to look at a glass vial of the author's toenails.
- teekert 10y ago"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!
- pheonikai 10y agoCoke 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.
- wruza 10y ago>shows its acidic nature Generally, yes. >and its ability to dissolve the material on which it is applied (Bio)chemistry is a bit more complicated than that. But anyway, if you have calcium or similar waterproof stalagmites in your intestines, you'd better get rid of those asap.
- teekert 10y agoStill 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison
- saiya-jin 10y agoyeah, 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?
- huhtenberg 10y agoAnother variation is Can Fanta dissolve a piece of liver? In Russia it's commonly believed that it does. Have no idea if it's true, probably not. Yet another gem is Can Pepsi be used to de-calcify and clean toilets? This is actually more believable, but still quite a bit out there.
- moron4hire 10y agoLOL, on my phone that first line got clipped (with no indication of such) to "Can Fanta dissolve a pie". I imagined Russian kids dropping pieces of apple pie into containers full of Fanta. And I thought to myself, "wouldn't be the weirdest thing I've seen a Russian do on YouTube."
- coldpie 10y agoWoah what are you doing to your livers where they're exposed directly to Fanta?
- LanceH 10y agoLivers in Russia? hah.
- gt2 10y agoTLDR No
- pionar 10y agoWhen I was a kid, I remember my dad once cleaning corrosion off car battery terminals with Coke. That + a wire brush. It did much better than just water + wire brush.
- hiddenkrypt 10y agoI use baking soda. On old batteries there's sometimes a little bit of acid leaking out around the terminals, and the base counteracts it. It's also a great abrasive, and washes away with water.
- omk 10y agoPasses Betteridge's law.
- buro9 10y agoCoke will help free a stuck seatpost in a bicycle if the frame is steel and the seat post is aluminium. Just turn the bike upside down, pour some coke down the seat tube, leave to stand overnight, and hit the seat with a mallet the next day.
- adrianN 10y agoHitting stuck things with a mallet is probably a pretty effective way to get them unstuck, independent of the presence of coke.
- barrkel 10y agoFreezing (e.g. freeze spray) should also help. Generally, with interference fit mixed metal components, heat / cold is the way to minimize damage on assembly or disassembly.
- jkot 10y agoHmm, results would be different if iron (not steel) nails would be used.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- varjag 10y agoWhat do you mean by "iron nails"? Nalis are always low-grade steel with low carbon content, the rest is iron.
- Elrac 10y agoMost 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 http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Nail.html
- varjag 10y agoBut no mention of keratin nails! What a woefully incomplete reference :) Still unclear what is meant by "iron". I mean, low carbon steel is iron with some trace impurities. Cast iron? Nails aren't cast, besides it's brittle and less prone to rust than low carbon steel.
- hiddenkrypt 10y agoUsually wrought iron, not cast iron. I have a blacksmith friend who made a large amount of iron nails when he was starting the trade, since it was good practice. He still makes them in demonstrations at Ren Faires. They're still used occasionally for horseshoes apparently, though that market from what I know has been using more and more mass-produced steel instead.
- croon 10y agoOnce again proving that headlines in the form of a question are answered simply "No".
- ad_a 10y agoWorthy of an igNobel
- js8 10y agoDefinitely worthy of The Simpsons episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treehouse_of_Horror_VII https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treehouse_of_Horror_VII
- muzster 10y agoThe sugar lobby is hard as nails.
- titzer 10y agoWhile coke does contain some phosphoric acid, that's dwarfed by the total amount of carbonic acid (H2CO3, commonly just called carbonation). Flat coke, where most of the carbonic acid has broken down to water and CO2 gas, is significantly less acidic.
- nxzero 10y agoThe pH level of most drinks are not low enough to eat metal, roughly a level of 2 depending on the metal and reactions: http://www.sheltondentistry.com/patient-information/ph-values-common-drinks/ http://www.sheltondentistry.com/patient-information/ph-value... Citric Acid will eat metal, which is why liquids like orange and lime juice are not stored in metal containers.
- secult 10y agoThis article reminded me of a Bill Gates joke: Bill, when I said "Please, buy china in the evening", I meant food.
- MasterYoda 10y agoI 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 :)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- stormbrew 10y agoThis 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.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- wyldfire 10y ago> 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.
- Elrac 10y agoI 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.
- nosidam 10y agoOh 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.
- wyldfire 10y agoYeah, good call, I think you'd have needed ~1 gram resolution to get anything interesting.
- qb45 10y agoThe nails would turn lighter because even though Coke probably doesn't dissolve steel it certainly does dissolve rust. Phosphoric acid is used in some commercial rust removers and soldering fluxes for metals like steel, nickel or chromium.
- danra 10y agoThe research was obviously funded by Coca-Cola.
- imgabe 10y agoWere the keratin nails in the same container as the steel nails? What if one provided a prophylactic effect preventing the other from being dissolved?! Rerun the experiment! 18 jars this time!
- ctdonath 10y agoOn a related note, Taco Bell Fire Sauce will polish a penny nicely.
- mark-r 10y agoBut is 1/4 ounce enough to show the effect? I would have used at least 8 ounces. Quantity matters! Also there was the slight possibility that the keratin nail provided buffering that prevents the steel nail from dissolving. It would have been prudent to test them separately.
- djrogers 10y agoThe quote the post attempts to test is this: The active ingredient in Coke is phosphoric acid. Its pH is 2.8. It will dissolve a nail in about 4 days. However, the test does not line up with my reading of the quote: Phospohric acid, which has a PH of 2.8 can dissolve a nail in about 4 days. Let's see what a nail does in phosphoric acid! -- edited for readability
- coldcode 10y agoIf you wait long enough, water will dissolve a nail.