The World’s Strongest Acid Might be Gentle Enough to Eat
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Hearing the word "superacid" may evoke memories of that scene from Breaking Bad, but perhaps counterintuitively, the strongest acid on Earth wouldn't be able to destroy your bathroom.
Our previous video about the strongest acids in the world: • The Strongest Acids in...
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Measuring how acidic something is by how basic it isn't sounds like some serious Discworld science 😂
Not how basic the acid isn't, rather how crap of a base the conjugate base is - i.e. for HF how basic is the fluoride ion? - by comparison it is quite basic and therefore HF is not a super acid. It actually isn't even a strong acid.
conjugate acid with pH 7 when
@@user-pr6ed3ri2k ??? pH measures the hydrogen ion concentration in a particular solution
GNU
OMG! Thank you for that reference! I haven't heard anybody reference Terry Pratchet for a while...
"...the helium hydride ion."
Oh no. That is cursed. That's some CH5 -tier cursed.
Where is Dr That Chemist when you need him?
@@Thesnakerox i will admit, he is the one who made me aware of acids that can protonate methane.
That’s extremely cursed. CH5, I can someone understand. A noble gas other than xenon forming a molecule? That’s illegal.
Helium hydride (usually deuteride) ion is what drives the methyliodide dissociation in chemical lasers
@@ferretyluv I remember I used the fact it's borderline batshit insanity for something like that to happen as the basis for one of the wacko races in a sci-fi I wrote a while back... lol
At this point I'm pretty sure chemists and physicists are just shooting lasers at literally everything and recording the results.
Well, yes, It's only science if you write it down.
Just as scientists are doing with coronavirus except they aren’t doing it in labs where leaks won’t happen.
If aperture can shoot lasers at anything and claim it's science so can they
I mean, frickin' lasers. At least they're writing it down. 😂
In fact, physicists shoot lasers at each other, that's how a particle accelerator works, roughly
I must be the strongest acid then because I disassociate all the dang time
Anxiety is secretly an acid 😅😅😅 stronger anxiety? More disassociation
User name checks out hahaha
@@Waltitude welllll wouldn't their username imply the exact _opposite_ of acid?
Dang, you managed to say it before I did. 😂
Nah, you’re just not basic.
High school killed my love for science. Thank you for helping to bring it back!
thats the point of high school
@@MrMcMuggel feels like it😂😂
This!!!
i agree - Some parts of high school ruined my favourite subjects & the internet being invented made my favourites into my FAVOURITES again!!❤
I can't believe it killed your spouse for science. this is so sad. 😢
The first thing that comes to my mind when thinking of super acids is Hank Green getting really excited about the concept of a super acid.
After that, Xenomorph blood.
The dangerous chemicals video is my all-time favorite
I had a moment of "okay but when do the potatoes come into the testing?". Might need to rewatch this when I'm more sober...
Irish much? 😂
hol up let him cook
Our pH meters at my workplace can measure negative pH values, but more often than not it's a sign that there's something wrong with the probe rather the acidicity is lower than zero.
Measuring negative values is not impossible, it just doesn't correlate to the hydronium concentration anymore. When the pH falls bellow zero, multi shelled ion clusters start forming in solution which drastically affect hydrogen ion activity, throwing the measurement way off
6:06 "Scary looking equation" ... Bruh. I would love to work with equations that straightforward. *cries in radiative transfer*
Tbf, the moment you bring up logarithms and their facsimiles is when you start entering into genuinely scary math territory.
@@Brown95P fornme it is when there are nabla operators, tensors and closed loop tripple integrals involved :)
Nerds!
@@dinkleburg9429 i wish! i am just a guy doing engineering while trying to avoid doing maths :) most of the time i make MathCAD do it for me :)
@@sanches2 nah, gotta go all the way with 15+ lemmas, 300+ pages, and a lot of abstract algebra
The craziest thing about the entire breaking bad was there being gallon jugs of HF in a highschool. Not a single mention of it being a contact poison either.
That's why we should probably be asking what is the most corrosive acid. Which is presumably fluoroantimonic acid?
Is there a scale for corrosivity?
Cause I think there should be, BC even non-acidic solutions have some scary corrosive properties. People act way more relaxed around alkaline/basic chemicals than they do acidic (likely due to entertainment portraying acid this way). I think a scale on the bottle (obviously there is a corrosive warning label anyways) would be a bit less vague than "corrosive, wash if skin contact"
I mean fluoroantimonic acid is very corrosive and it’s more corrosive than magic acid which there is a myth that it can dissolve candles but that’s not true I recommend to watch the videos from the CZcamsr Chemical Force on fluoroantimonic acid and the video on magic acid from him also
@@williambradley611
You have to store it in polytetrafluoroethylene bottles because it's so corrosive that it corrodes glass. It reacts with alkanes.
There definitely is at least one corrosion scale, which is the one shown in the diamond shaped labels on the back of chemical-carrying trucks
@@caracatoacacepe on the NFPA Fire Diamond, blue represents health hazard, red represents flammability and yellow represents how prone to explosive decomposition it is
"not even through a bathtub" - bathtubs are usually acrylic or enameled steel, neither seems particularly prone to destruction by acids.
This is mostly true, except for the HF possibly dissolving the enamel. But not the steel
Was definitely the “steal your face” tabs from ‘82 Dead tour
Hahaha
The only acid strength measurement I accept is the number of Nostromo decks one drop will go through.
It makes me wonder, could carborane acids be the basis for the biology of a fictional alien species with highly acidic blood, similar to the Xenomorphs? Given their selectivity and catalytic potential, carborane acids could be a more realistic explanation. Granted, it removes the horror movie spectacle of seeing a drop of alien blood eating through several layers of spaceship floor.
i understod about 25% of that but you sound smart, thumbs up
Boron isn’t a super common element as it’s not a product of regular nuclear fusion (stellar nucleosynthesis if you want to use the fancy term), while I couldn’t tell you about how easy it would be for an organism to synthesise, it’s not common enough for a complex species to make use of
Are you asking if it will function as an oxygen carrying motif? I don't see any reason why it would, nor any means for boron centers in the cage to display cooperativity. Generally, for aqueous biology as we know it, if your goal is to buffer the blood pH to within a certain range, you would want to use a weak acid-base system, one which can accept protons if there are too many and donate protons if there are too few. This is a pretty hard question to definitively answer because you're asking about alien life that might have non-carbon or aqueous physiology, in which case a boron-based super acid might have a function that we have no analog to. But there is no physiological function appearing in earth-based life that could be handled with super acid chemistry. As the person above mentioned, boron is cosmologically rare because it tends to get burned in early stellar fusion; but, like uranium, it's much more crustally abundant than expected because geological processes tend to concentrate it into dense pockets in the upper crust, which is why borax mining can give us cheap boron-based laundry detergent. Perhaps on other planets there are similar processes that concentrate boron into nutrient accessible pockets
Nah, the conjugate base it forms is stable. For instance, sulphuric acid corrodes metal because, in contact with metal, it releases hydrogen, and then the sulphate ion reacts with the metal that was deprived of its electrons. So, the destructive action is done by the ion left behind, which is the conjugate base. The same happens if you drop an iron piece onto copper sulphate. The iron piece gets corroded, because the sulphate ions floating around have more affinity for iron than for copper. That also explains why certain metals resist certain acids.
nope
Ah, the Acid Dissociation Constant, also known as my sophomore year of college
While the ad read got my interest, 7$ per pack of instant Ramen can F right off with Poki's 7$ cookies that are basically trying to compete with Oreos but with 1/3 the contents.
I'll definitely be sticking to 60c per package instant ramen that I spruce up with vegetables and veggie bouillon on my own, thank you.
I almost think we want to separate terms, because colloquially, 'strong' means 'don't touch', which is a useful function to flag. Perhaps 'reactive'?
But wow this was a fantastic tour of the science of acids!
it feels like scientists always end up doing this
@@tatianatub I suspect they start out with the colloquial terms in mind, then when they try to define them in the mechanics of their discipline, things get... complicated.
'corrosive'
"Be a real hero. Be strong enough to be gentle." Captain Larry Cullen, Jr, USMC.
Wait, the corrosive dissolving of nearby material we associate superacids with is actually due to their free bases?!
Man, no wonder most pH levels below 7 are still eatable while anything past 7 is questionable for consumption; bases are the real culprits! 😨
actually hydrofluoric acid isn't only not the strongest its actually a weak acid acid≠corrosive hydrofluoric acid is corrosive (and poisonous) because of its reactivity and something can be reactive without being an acid
most acids also are not as corrosive as people imagine
I tell my students this all the time. HF is weak, but it will dissolve your arm quite effectively, so long sleeves please.
I had to acid wash an obscene number of sample cups a few months ago. I had to use 10%HCl. I spilled a bit on my arm and the pain was intense. A few days later, I spilled about 2L on my pants and lab floor. My pants survived, the wax did not. Within minutes the wax was gone and I had a bright red burn on my leg.
@@cggc9510 i mean hcl is dangerous but it takes a bit of time before it starts burning and it wont dissolve you, hf is a weak acid and it can kill you if you are not careful. people heave a wierd cartoonish view of acids and just chemicals in general
@@cggc9510 damn that sounds terrifying
As a chemist I would use the standard definition of acid strength which is essentially the concentration of the H+ ion in solution. HF is generally a week acid at normal solution levels as it does not dissociate as much as say HCl or H2SO4. Of course the corrosiveness is not dependent on strength - sulphuric acid essentially removes water directly so that sugars, for instance, become pure carbon. Nitric acid react badly with the skin. Hydrochloric exists in the stomach.
Water dissolves pretty much everything, given time.
For those struggling with the concept in 4:30, pH is calculated as a figure of the concentration; at the concentrations we're talking about, the figure has to be negative to match reality.
SciShow never went clubbing.
Yes but why do i need acid to enjoy music
Now my brain hurts. I think I’ll have to watch it again much later in small parts
I actually like the multichoice pop quizzes you do.
A wonderful example on how to transform hard academic science into a real moment of discovery and pleasure !
You explain this better than my 3 different uni (1sh year chemistry) professors
I have understand nothing of this video, but it was really fun to watch it! ❤
Hoffman 60th anniversary tabs were pretty good. But Felix tabs hands down were the strongest we had.
Loved chemistry ⚗️ in school. That and Geography and history. Great channel. Educational and informative 👌
At about $7 per package, IMMI Ramen is pretty darned expensive. You're paying quite the premium for "healthy" ramen noodles.
Which is also pretty funny because almost all noodles are "plant based" to begin with.
It has fairly high protein, but it's just because it uses pumpkin seed protein powder instead of wheat flour.
And tbh if you want that protein content you can just eat peanuts, which are way cheaper.
Pumpkin seed powder is 25 bucks per kg, so it's fairly affordable if you want to make your own noodles. It'll cost like 30 bucks and take around 2 hours for the equivalent of 15 packs.
Also the 50g of carbs in a packet of regular ramen is nothing.
You're better off eating beans and chickpeas.
If you want quick food, take canned couscous vegetables, measure the juice, boil it, and add 1:1 couscous semolina.
If you want to cut the carbs you could use high protein semolina.
Buckminsterfullerine is an interesting form of carbon.
the balls carbon
The introduction topic is very ionic equilibrium in General/Analytical Chemistry then H-knot changed everything. Nice topic, dude! :)
this title is me at every festival
plant based ramen? is wheat not a plant anymore?
Unfortunately some idiot thought adding eggs to the noodles was a good idea, and its not just ramen, many spagettis have eggs
That person was no idiot. Eggs are delicious and egg noodles amazing
@@pootis1699 ALL dried pasta is water and wheat. Google it.
@@danielhaigler556 egg noods are delicious. but standard dried pasta has no eggs.
I'm a biochemist who hates inorganic "normal" chemistry and this video finally made me understand how acids, bases and those damn equations work. 👏 youtube > university
i love this stuff!
A potassium-nickel or rhodium battery would likely be very effective.
A potassium-gold or lead battery would likely be super effective.
In my job, acid is H+ leaving in respiration. During a code we must manage PH balance by adequately managing respiration. I also think of the 2.0 stomach acid that could burn a hole in your car. Ulcers hurt.
I'm not good at chemistry, but this video was well explained and very interesting to me!
I work with Carboranes in my PhD program - very cool to see them pop up here!
Thnx Pal
Surprised to see the Hammett Acidity function pop up here! I just encountered it last year in my Physical Organic Chemistry course, albeit in a much less fun manner. And we had to actually calculate stuff on the exam
brb going to the acid store
@ChemicalForce needs to do a video on these acids now.
So if I understand this right, the carborane molecule when dissociated from its hydrogen atom is very stable as a -1 ion because of a huge number of interconnected covalent bonds sharing their electrons between them; the polarization that comes from the loss of that one proton is distributed very well among the whole structure. And because of this it basically just throws off its hydrogen atom whenever possible making it by definition an extremely strong acid, but the structure that's left behind is also unlikely to react with any other chemicals.
Pretty much, yes.
Chlorinated carborane acid just rolls 1d20 acid damage each time it interacts with a proton receiver.
My favorite acid is the one you use to make Aqua Regia, because gold water is cool imo
Plant based ramen? Isn't that just regular ramen? Aren't the noodles wheat? Isn't wheat a plant?
I know That some Noodles have Eggs included, so Maybe they Are using An egg Replacement?
Or maybe Their flavour Packets are Completely vegan As well
This is the first time I’ve been thankful to have tried in ap chem
To boink an atom with a lazer to measure the vibes of the atom should be scientific terminology.
I think of the sulfuric acid lake from that one disaster movie. Eats through an entire motorboat in seconds.
Ok, I just wanted to watch a cool video about acids. Was not expecting flashbacks to the final chem exam ( I didn't study for it, and it came back to bite me). Should have been expected given how informative Sci show is.
Acid flashbacks 😂
0:13 a hell of a trip 😂
"strong enough to be gentle" comes to mind.
What do you mean "BOING" isn't a scientific term???!!!???
$6.50 for a SINGLE packet of ramen? W'what?
4:47 HUH? Acids with negative ph definitely exist. It's a logarhythm.. any amount above 0 will be x elevated to something, and even x elevated to a negative number is still above zero.
helium hydride is so cured that I've never even heard of it, bravo
0:56 lol you know what we were thinking 😂
This video will be keeping my teeth awake at night.
12:12 we have got it, but we will give it to you only if you prove or disprove the collatz conjecture.
Will you please do an episode about the most corrosive substance whether it's acid or base or whatever.
Look bossman when I think of powerful acids I think of Aliens.
I think they should have picked a better title for this loooool
Looks like a Finnish M61 gas mask in the thumbnail. Definitely surplus at this point
Strongest acid. The scene that comes to mind is a brick being set on fire... Then the asphalt surface under the brick... Then the dirt under the asphalt
Very good oxidation
That's not an acid. That's "substance N". (acids aren't oxidizers)
@@jfbeam floroantimonic acid
@@jfbeam "Substance N" was just a codename. It's chlorine trifluoride.
I saw Kermit the frog as the thumbnail
That was a wild ride
Man.. I love acid - like the hydrochloric, sulfuric, nitric, citric, lactic, etc. kind lol (I really like solvents too - naphtha is my favorite there)... I really like chemistry in general - the stupid thing is though, I didn't care that much for it - or at least the theory/fundamentals - back in high school and I paid _literally_ zero attention to it in class..
I've loved science in general my entire life but I've always been nervous and fidgety and had ADHD and I simply could not sit and focus on taking notes and memorizing formulas and tables and atomic numbers and mundane, abstract information. All I can remember is filling the beakers with hydrogen and lighting them and making them pop - I either deliberately or absent mindedly way overfilled mine and rattled the class windows when I lit it - but at the time, I really didn't understand why we were doing it or what the point was.
But I remember I sat beside a really smart girl who just so happened to also be cool (and good looking - and out of my league even though she was modest and nice and everything) who agreed to let me copy and give me homework answers and such - I remember waking up more than once with my face down on those big black chemistry class tables with drool pooled on the table.. It's crazy, I have a legendary memory and that's all I remember from chemistry class...
And all of that to say, it's just crazy because now, as a 37 year old and for probably the last 10+ years, I've had an absolute fascination - borderline obsession - with chemistry. I've seriously considered going back to college for a chemistry-related degree - like electrochemistry or organic chemistry or something. I even spent like $1500 of college loan money (for an unrelated IT degree lol) to buy a pretty advanced chemistry glassware set, various condenser tubes, magnetic stirrer/heater plate, stirring bars, sets of Erhlenmeier flasks and round bottom flasks, test tubes, graduated cylinders, rubber stoppers, thermometers, glass stirring rods, spatulas and other implements, a vacuum funnel/vacuum flask/electric pump/filtration paper, clamps and stands, all sorts of acids, solvents and other chemicals, and just on and on and on.
It's not _every_ piece of chemistry equipment under the sun but it's _well_ beyond a basic hobby set and I could theoretically do the vast majority of common procedures. I remember I had a run-in with the drug world around that time and all the dope heads thought I bought it to cook drugs and tried to solicit me to cook some and several dealers offered to buy it all from me for that purpose - but even though I was a drug addict, it was still just about the pure, innocent chemistry fascination..
It just feels weird that I ignored a lot of things as a kid that I later ended up loving - math was the exact same story as chemistry. As far as classes, I always did well in and enjoyed English, literature, any kind of creative or technical writing, art and history as a kid - for whatever reason - now it's kind of flipped to the technical/analytical science and math stuff as an adult.. And I'd love to become knowlegeable in chemistry - whether by taking classes/getting a degree or just recreationally by reading/watching videos/maybe subscribing to learning services or whatever... I just feel like chemistry is my groove but I know next to nothing of the in-depth, hardcore theory/fundamentals - the important stuff that I slept through in high school. I know you can't just "wing it" with chemistry.
Here's a simple solution. No pun intended and I do not mean best solution either, just a simple one.
Assume that you will dissolve it in water, but water of equal mass to the substance you are measuring. The resultant ionization of the water afterwards tells you something measurable about the substance you just dissolved. Plus it requires dilution based on equal amounts of mass relative to the substance. I'm being vague because in theory it works for both acid and alkaline.
I really think we need like, three numbers for acidity right now. Ion-presence (total ions per mol), standard Ph, and a general reactivity measurement based on the half-life when dissolved in water... Possibly of equal mass to the substance.
That was interesting enlightening 😮
"let´s figure out the strongest acid in the world!"
"Cool, how?"
"let´s redefine what "strongest" means in regards to acid!"
"Brilliant!"
I call shenanigans.
if the acid is strong I would hope I could eat them.
Fun fact: All ant stings contain formic acid. This makes it the most popular ant-acid in the world.
Very interesting, at least the 20% of it I understood. This goes in the "come back later" list.
Protons for everyone!
Wow, i thought the strongest acid would make you trip like hell
The one thing I hated about high school chemistry was the contradictory significant figure rules.
While everyone is having insightful discussion about strong acids I suddenly feel like making some Carbonara for dinner. 👀
Didn't Mythbuster busted the fact that the bathtub would dissolve from the acid?
Depends on the bathtub. HF would indeed eat an old porcelain cast iron tub, but it wouldn't touch fiberglass.
Hell yeah
For someone who knows about Metatrons Cube this is pretty radical 😂
Nope, the scene that comes to mind is the scene from alien
Be careful with the glassware, we don't want anyone to...
*puts on safety glasses*
...drop acid.
😁
When I think of "strong acid," well actually my first thought goes to Xenomorph blood, which a few drops of which was shown the be able to easily make its way through several steal deck plates. I've always wondered what type of acid that could be and if it can even exist in real life.
As far as my highschool chemistry goes, my teacher told us that on the metric of "making the most stuff disappear" she said nitric acid was the king as it was the only known acid that could dissolve pure silver without being mixed with another acid. That was a long time ago though so some of the details may have gotten a bit "corroded."
Yes, that is what people think of when they hear "strong acid", but it's not how it works in chemistry, as he said.
How reactive an acid is depends mostly on the conjugated base it leaves behind, and yes, concentrated nitric acid will dissolve silver, but not mainly due to its acidity, but due to the conjugated base being a strong oxidiser if concentrated enough and in a sour environment, which it creates itself.
How does heavy hydrogen affect acids?
(Any/all)
Hi Stefan!
I thought the strongest acid was no-doubt-about-it helium hydride, but I guess that's only known for sure in the gas phase.
The strongest acid I ever took melted on my tongue!
drugs are bad, hmmkaaaay
you need more Tegridy!
:P
@mho... Not all drugs are bad. Acid is fun. It's not for everybody though. It's not really habit forming. You can't do it every day. Potency decreases the shorter the time span between use. I give it 3 weeks before doing it again, minimum. Also, weed and acid compliment each other. It's therapeutic af.
I thought strong acids definitionally completely disassociate and thus have a Ka of infinity.
What about Peroxymonosulfuric acid and Perchloric acid?
Yeah the bathtub scene from BRBA wasn't what came to mind. Fear and loathing did
my favorite acid is auric acid
£35 for a single pack of instant ramen? No thank you!
It's not one pack, it's six.
...which is still overpriced.
0:20 Chickenhead, it was the strongest blotter back in the day.
Strongest acid? One time i tried some strong acid and forgot that i lived on earth for a couple hours.
Good times
The juxtaposition of superacids and ramen 😂
If they have acid that it will eat through anything what would they keep it in?