Will Coke Dissolve a Nail? (2003) | Hacker News Reader

Will Coke Dissolve a Nail? (2003)

joshmadison.com

118 pointsselmat99 comments

"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.

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?

But do you need half a litre of vinegar to clean a toilet?

I was addressing the toilet cleaning statement. How much do you need to use for that?

But ok, to make break your point I need to provide you with an example of a liquid that cleans the toilet just as well as coke but is healthy while drinking similar amounts. How about lemon juice, diluted to be drinkable without any direct adverse effects on your health and with the same pH as the coke. I'm just guessing but I think it is possible to do that.

Most folks couldn't get it down due to the taste.

What folks use over a salad is much more paletable - a sweet tasting weak vinegar + oil, and sometimes a touch of sugar. This doesn't make it any better or worse than sodas, simply different. There are many things we eat that aren't something we can do in really large quantities or things that can also have industrial or cleaning purposes. This doesn't make these dangerous, simply multipurpose depending on amount and strength.

Hell, you can get very sick by drinking too much water - or get too dehydrated - and can die if you try to breath it. Yet, water is pretty necessary and healthy to have.

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 this time as well (drinking hot sauce for example) and there couldn't have been room for 16oz of just vinegar. If you've not played around with those tablets, I recommend it even if you get some stomach upset from the things you consume.

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

nah, you stomach is already full of a way stronger acid.

To be fair, from my recollection of freshmen challenges, a cup of vinegar, a large raw onion, and a head of garlic is sufficient to either induce vomiting, or to compel the 'winner' to self-induce vomiting.

The advent of both these kind of challenges as well as Youtube have brought to light a level of durability of the human digestive tract I wouldn't have previously expected. One only needs to watch someone like skippy62able (L.A. Beast) to have their eyes opened (and possibly their gag reflex triggered). For example, witness him consuming baking soda and then drinking a glass of vinegar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ke1el2TsDs

Vinegar has nothing on the natural stomach acid already present in your digestive system. People don't give enough credit to how resilient the human body actually is.

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

The other ill effect of sour beers is your wallet.

Now a new experiment: Will Upland Sours dissolve a nail in 4 days?

>yeah, please drink half a litre, or even better 2 litre of vinegar and report back to us how that went.

And what is that supposed to prove?

People regularly drink "half a litre" or 2lt of Coke and report back just fine.

The main reason not to drink half a littre of vinegar is its taste and extra acidity.

If it had the same acidity as Coke AND better taste it would be fine to drink.

Well, since you're asking for anecdotal evidence...

Lemon juice has a pH of about 2, while most colas are more Alkaline at around 2.5. My mom eats lemons raw nearly every day. Sometimes limes (pH ~2.2).

It can also be used to clean battery terminals among other things.

But then again, vinegar is a fairly common cleaning agent: Baking soda and salt are fairly effective as well. I've used salt and lemon juice to clean tarnish off of copper: Toothpaste to clean the tarnish off of silver jewelry or shine up gold. None of these are viewed as bad or unhealthy in the doses we tend to consume them in. Vegetable oils and waxes are used in industrial applications: Soy can be used as a base for ink and lipstick.

Stomach acid itself is about as strong as battery acid, actually. And this is something your body produces and is necessary.

Basically: There are a great many chemicals that have multiple uses, and are only dangerous when used in sufficient amounts or on specific surfaces.

It always astonnished me that cellular chemistr ca produce this without selfdestruction.

Its not because something is acid that it eats everything just like in Aliens.

> But then again, vinegar is a fairly common cleaning agent: Baking soda and salt are fairly effective as well. I've used salt and lemon juice to clean tarnish off of copper: Toothpaste to clean the tarnish off of silver jewelry or shine up gold. None of these are viewed as bad or unhealthy in the doses we tend to consume them in.

Absolutely, but I'd be worried about someone who chugged any of those things in the same quantity peopole tend to drink coke.

Coke is 89% water (from the other % most is sugar).

Not really comparable to consuming 2 cans of salt, baking soda, toothpaste, etc.

And would you really be worried for people drinking several cans of lemon juice per day?

Straight lemon juice in those quantities is actually bad for the teeth. As in, my sister used to eat lemons like oranges and quit because of that.

The most apt comparison with lemon juice to coke would be lemonade, though. And some folks do drink quite a bit of that.

> And would you really be worried for people drinking several cans of lemon juice per day?

Yes, absolutely. It's pretty damaging to teeth if consumed regularly, AIUI.

(Personal experience: I once started drinking a few glasses of orange juice (weaker than lemon) daily, within a year I needed four fillings. Stopped drinking it immediately afterwards, haven't needed fillings before or since).

That likely had more to do with the sugar than the acid in the juice.

I'd been drinking apple juice in similar quantities before and since for years (when I say "started" I really mean I switched from apple to orange), which I believe has similar sugar content.

Don't know about your teeth, but that sugar is pushing for diabetes. Drinking juice straight (not diluted with water) at 100+ kCal/cup rate, in quantity, is a bad idea

Yeah, this is a few years back now; I spoke to a nutritionist last year for the first time in my life and that was the first thing she told me to cut (and I have).

Quantities matter, naturally. I'd worry about them as well, honestly. Especially if they were eating tubes of fluoride toothpaste. Luckily they are usually just ingredients in stuff, just like the chemicals in coke.

Vinegar might be somewhat of an exception - especially apple cider vinegar. Folks use it for a natural cure, some folks drinking a glass multiple times a day. I'm personally suspicious and it seems in these sorts of amounts it isn't the safest thing for folks [1]. Again, quantities, preparation, and dosages matter.

[1] http://www.livestrong.com/article/494866-recommended-amount-...

>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.

You know your stomach has pH 1 right ?

Then why not just check PH to prove acidity?

>Effectiveness of Coke being used for this purpose shows its acidic nature and its ability to dissolve the material on which it is applied.

What effectiveness? Who even does that? And from those who do it, who measured the effectiveness compared to plain water?

Water did the most damage to the nail in the test.

When I used to drive long distances for work, my windshield would have all these dead insects that are hard to clean even with Windex. My then boss showed me how to clean it with coke and it was squeaky clean.

Now if you fill your toilet with Brawndo...

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

Dihydrogen Monoxide is a fearful substance and should be banned

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_hoax

You forgot the link to http://www.dhmo.org/

While 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.

As discussed on Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/acid.asp

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.

> 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.

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.

Yeah, good call, I think you'd have needed ~1 gram resolution to get anything interesting.

The 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.

Were 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!

When 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.

I 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.

I'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?

I 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.

I'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.

"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.

Coke 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.

Hitting stuck things with a mallet is probably a pretty effective way to get them unstuck, independent of the presence of coke.

As they say, increase the size of the hammer if it initial does not work.

And if it breaks it would have had to be replaced anyway?

For stuck seat posts, not really.

But coke does help avoid the angle grinder approach.

Freezing (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.

The 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-value...

Citric Acid will eat metal, which is why liquids like orange and lime juice are not stored in metal containers.

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

But 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.

Usually 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.

By iron I mean whatever dissolves easiest. Some metals will be very rusty after two weeks in water.

The 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

Another 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.

LOL, 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."

Woah what are you doing to your livers where they're exposed directly to Fanta?

Livers in Russia? hah.

But 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.

There 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.

On a related note, Taco Bell Fire Sauce will polish a penny nicely.

If you wait long enough, water will dissolve a nail.

The research was obviously funded by Coca-Cola.

Worthy of an igNobel

Definitely worthy of The Simpsons episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treehouse_of_Horror_VII

Conclusion "As I suspected, no nail of any kind was dissolved by any of the sodas."

Myth busted.

Relevant?

"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-chem...

[1] http://flatulencecures.com/is-soda-acidic

[2] http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/faq/why-is-phosphoric-acid-used-i...

I am convinced that this whole post is a troll designed to get me to look at a glass vial of the author's toenails.

TLDR No

Once again proving that headlines in the form of a question are answered simply "No".

In accordance with Betteridge's law,

TL;DR: No.

The sugar lobby is hard as nails.

This article reminded me of a Bill Gates joke: Bill, when I said "Please, buy china in the evening", I meant food.

Passes Betteridge's law.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com