WEBVTT - From the Vault: Hollywood Acid 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:07.480 Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My 0:00:07.560 --> 0:00:10.680 name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday, 0:00:10.680 --> 0:00:13.200 and I would go into the vault, but my feet 0:00:13.240 --> 0:00:15.680 are melting. It's all this green goo that you were 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:18.439 stepping in and now it's dissolving our feet by a 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:22.439 wonderful active coincidence. Today we're going to be exploring the 0:00:22.560 --> 0:00:25.200 quest for Hollywood Acid. This is an episode that originally 0:00:25.200 --> 0:00:28.560 aired May twelve, two thousand sixteen. It's about the idea 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:32.160 of that perfect movie acid, the acid that burns right 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:35.680 through everything. Uh. And this episode I think was highly 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:39.720 inspired by a scene in the movie Batman Forever where 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:42.600 a guy gets locked in a vault with a bunch 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:45.040 of acid. Oh that's right, that's right, it's perfect. Think 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:47.199 we discussed it in the episode. I will just wager 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:49.440 that I don't need to go ahead and explain it here, right. 0:00:49.520 --> 0:00:52.040 The other major touchdown, of course, being the blood of 0:00:52.040 --> 0:00:55.480 the Xeno morph. But what is that You were the 0:00:55.480 --> 0:00:56.800 one I think you can up with the idea for 0:00:56.840 --> 0:00:59.800 this episode because you were watching these movies with these 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:02.800 oulous acids in them and saying, well, what what would 0:01:02.800 --> 0:01:07.040 that be? What actual, naturally occurring or even artificial acid 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:09.520 could eat through the whole of a ship like this 0:01:09.600 --> 0:01:13.800 and have such such instant flesh melting capabilities. Right, So 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:16.959 we just thought we'd have a little rapid corrosion party. Yeah, 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:22.720 let's get into it. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:32.480 Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. I Hey, welcome 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:34.119 to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert 0:01:34.200 --> 0:01:36.360 Lamb and don Joe McCormick. Hey, real quick at the 0:01:36.400 --> 0:01:38.360 top of the show here. If you want to explore 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:40.640 more of Stuff to bow your Mind, head on over 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:42.440 to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:44.640 our mothership. That is the main website where you will 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:46.880 find all of our episodes. You find videos, blog post 0:01:47.040 --> 0:01:48.960 links out to our social media accounts, and if you 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:51.200 want to support the show, a great way to do 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:54.440 it is to simply rate and review us wherever you 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:57.680 get the show. Yeah, so, Robert, I've got a question 0:01:57.680 --> 0:01:59.560 for you. All right, hit me, Joe, I'm gonna take 0:01:59.560 --> 0:02:03.120 you to a dark place. This might be a little traumatic. Okay, okay, 0:02:03.280 --> 0:02:06.680 do you remember nineteen nineties the Batman movies of the 0:02:06.720 --> 0:02:12.080 nineteen nineties, Think back to Batman Forever, who that was 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:15.440 That was a Dark Time directed by Joel Schumacher, uh 0:02:15.680 --> 0:02:19.840 starring Val Kilmer as Batman and Tommy Lee Jones in 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:22.040 it as the as two Face a very manic to 0:02:22.240 --> 0:02:24.600 face if I recall, yeah, he was. He was kind 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:26.519 of all over the place that that one was snarling 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:29.840 a lot, kind of whipping his body around in a frenzy. 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:32.280 And that of course was he acid scarred in that 0:02:32.600 --> 0:02:35.280 telling of the Uh, I believe he was. Yeah, they 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:38.640 so the story of two Face in that version is 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:42.400 that he's a Harvey Dent is the lawyer who becomes 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:44.839 two Face. Believe he's a district attorney and he gets 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:46.880 scarred on one part of his face and it drives 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:49.600 him insane. And uh yeah, I don't think they go 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:52.400 deep into the backstory in Batman Forever, But anyway, it's 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:55.440 Tommy Lee Jones and he's he's going wild and he's 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:57.600 really trying to get Batman in this one. So there's 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:01.120 a scene where Batman goes into a bank vault where 0:03:01.160 --> 0:03:04.400 there is a I believe a vault guard of some 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:07.960 kind tied up, and when Batman goes in to rescue 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:13.160 this guard, the door slams shut and Acid starts pouring 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:15.080 out of all of the I believe out of the 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:18.600 safe deposit boxes. So a lot of people maybe we're 0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:22.200 keeping their precious acid in this vault. Uh. And the 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:25.360 the vault guard realizes what's happening as as Two Face 0:03:25.440 --> 0:03:28.480 taunts them that they're going to die in this bank vault, 0:03:28.880 --> 0:03:34.840 and the guard says, oh no, it's boiling acid. There's 0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:36.960 like a seven second YouTube clip of this that I 0:03:36.960 --> 0:03:39.440 watch at least once a week. It's one of my favorites. 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:41.960 I I watched this for the first time, I think 0:03:42.000 --> 0:03:43.920 because I don't know that I've actually seen this. Uh, 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:47.400 this Batman film. I was super into the first two. Yeah, 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:49.640 I was a kid. Yeah, the Burden Batman's were great, 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:52.680 and I wanted to get into the Schumacher ones and 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:55.280 it didn't work. And I think part of the reason 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:58.840 it's not worth it is that boiling acid. Uh. It 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:02.680 tightly somes up everything about those films well exactly. And 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:05.040 one of the things that I find so funny about 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:07.119 it is, well, if two Faces trying to kill them, 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:12.840 why couldn't it be Oh no, it's boiling water. I mean, 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:15.480 if it's boiling what what difference does it make? Or 0:04:15.480 --> 0:04:17.640 if it's acid, or hey, if it's just water, if 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:21.039 you're flooding, if you're flooding a sealed right, I mean 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:26.240 it can be that it's room temperature water. We're gonna drown. Yeah, 0:04:26.320 --> 0:04:31.040 And so this obviously brings in a favorite old trope 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:34.200 of the superhero genre, but really it's all throughout the 0:04:34.240 --> 0:04:38.480 movies and this is movie acid. Noticed that the guard 0:04:38.600 --> 0:04:41.279 in the vault doesn't say what the chemical compound is. 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:46.400 It's not like he recognizes, Oh no, it's hydrofluoric acid. No, 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:49.760 it's just acid. And this kind of acid plays a 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:52.960 role in all of our favorite you know, our favorite cartoons, 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:57.279 science fiction and superhero stuff. It's it's movie acid. It's 0:04:57.320 --> 0:05:01.520 Hollywood acid. So you're probably familiar with this. You remember 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:04.760 lots of other scenes from Batman. I've bet right. It's 0:05:04.760 --> 0:05:08.360 always in Batman, like the villain captures Batman, is the penguin, 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:11.440 or somebody's got Batman tied up on a rope dangling 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:14.039 over a vat of acid. Yeah, I mean, it's such 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:16.880 a like a vat of acid is one of those things. 0:05:16.880 --> 0:05:21.480 It's it's a it's a perfect like human technological achievement. 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:25.000 And we can then utilize for menacing purposes. You know, 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:27.240 it's like the it's like having a whole bunch of 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:30.560 molten steel on hand or a hydraulic press. Right. It 0:05:30.600 --> 0:05:33.480 represents all of the evils of human industry and sort 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:37.279 of the cold killer nature of technology. But at the 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:39.640 same time it's it's a great just sort of like 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:42.920 a vertical peril. It's always like a thing to have 0:05:43.040 --> 0:05:45.159 below you. It's like a pit of piranhas or a 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:47.440 pit of crocodiles or something. In the case, it's a 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:51.200 pit of molecules that want to h want to play 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:54.719 nice with all of your skin. So what are the 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:57.839 properties of Hollywood acid or movie acid we might call it. 0:05:57.880 --> 0:05:59.880 I want to list a few and maybe you'll have 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:02.040 some of your own for it. One of them is 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:05.760 that it causes severe and immediate burns to the skin 0:06:05.839 --> 0:06:09.240 and soft tissues. Does that sound about right, Yeah, just 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:14.760 immediate scarification, multification um. And we can run through some 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:16.760 examples of that in a minute, right. So another one 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:19.760 is if you put organic materials such as a batman, 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:22.600 into a vat of acid, it will kill and then 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:26.159 rapidly dissolve that organism, so it has not only killing 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:31.200 and burning powers, but also liquefication powers. Okay, yes, you're 0:06:31.240 --> 0:06:34.200 with me so far. Another one is that the colors 0:06:34.240 --> 0:06:37.000 can vary, but it's never clear like water. You notice 0:06:37.080 --> 0:06:40.600 that the acid in the movies it always is usually opaque, 0:06:40.960 --> 0:06:45.359 usually a shade of green, purple, or orange. I find Yeah, green, 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:47.760 I think is the big one. And and I'll mention 0:06:47.800 --> 0:06:50.919 a few examples that have instilled that that idea in me. 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:53.000 But like, if I was to draw a picture, uh, 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:55.200 you know, doodle something with acid on the side of 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:57.560 the piece of paper, it would be green. Yeah. A 0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:00.400 good example of the green acid is in that classic 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:04.400 episode of The Simpsons where Millhouse becomes fallout Boy and 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:07.240 there's there's radioactive man. They're filming a scene from the 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:12.040 movie that's real ascid. I want to see goggles people, Yeah, exactly, goggles. 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:16.120 They do nothing. Uh, it's great. But so another thing 0:07:16.120 --> 0:07:19.960 about the ascid is that it displays ambient bubbling, so 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:22.520 you don't have to heat it up. It just naturally 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:24.880 boils like a like a pot on the boil. Well 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:26.360 that's so you can look at it and know that 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:29.480 it's acid, like it's it's bubbling, it's green. It could 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:32.360 not be more acid. Yeah, and of course the final 0:07:32.560 --> 0:07:35.200 the final factor is often kept in a giant vat, 0:07:35.320 --> 0:07:38.320 though sometimes also kept in something that squirts it out. 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:39.720 Do you want to keep it in an open vat, 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:43.080 open open top with some you know, room to have 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:45.560 some sort of a chain chain system in place and 0:07:45.640 --> 0:07:49.240 some pulleys or whatever, however you want to position your 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:52.720 nemesis above it? Right now, Robert, tell me your movie 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:55.640 Acid story? What what? What are your memories from childhood 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:58.560 of beloved movie Acid? Oh? I have, I have several, 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:03.320 but the most scarring was at a young age, like 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:06.560 too young of an age? I saw RoboCop. Who lets 0:08:06.560 --> 0:08:08.880 you watch RoboCop? At a young age? I think it 0:08:09.000 --> 0:08:12.320 was like um, like an uncle's house and it was on. 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:16.240 But then again, RoboCop is so violent it's hard to 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:20.920 determine exactly what age during a childhood is appropriate to 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:24.960 watch RoboCop. A RoboCop an R rated ultra violent picture 0:08:25.440 --> 0:08:27.720 for which there were toys, and I think still our 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:30.880 toys produced. Another thing I mean to say about RoboCop 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:33.480 is that the level of violence and it isn't incidental. 0:08:33.559 --> 0:08:37.480 It's deliberately hyper violent, I would say. In the satirical uh, 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:40.920 for satirical reasons. Yeah, I mean it's a great film. Um, 0:08:40.960 --> 0:08:43.840 but who I think back about to my seeing it 0:08:43.880 --> 0:08:45.760 as a as a young person, and I'm a little 0:08:46.000 --> 0:08:48.360 palled at times. But yeah, there's a scene where, and 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:50.360 I'm sure anyone who has seen this has this ed 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:52.800 burned into their mind as well, one of the villains 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:56.760 Hinchman's gets gets just coated in acid. I believe his 0:08:56.880 --> 0:08:58.600 name is Emial. Is that it is that his name? 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:01.400 So in me gets coated in acid. I don't even 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:04.199 remember how it happened, Like did RoboCop shoot a vada 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:07.440 acid that was behind him? And setting Well, there are 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:09.120 a lot of there's a lot of sort of ambient 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:11.880 industry in the movie. It takes place in a dystopian 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:15.439 future Detroit, and they're like old factories with what we 0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:18.319 would presume are just vats of toxic waste and acid 0:09:18.400 --> 0:09:21.440 hanging around. Yeah, and somehow this guy gets it splashed 0:09:21.480 --> 0:09:23.800 all over him during a car chase scene. Yeah, and 0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:29.040 then he comes just zombie like walking out shambling, totally meltified, 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:32.079 and and then a car runs over Like there's a 0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:34.840 second there where you just horrified, like, oh, this poor guy, 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:37.800 look at the state he's in and then like Robocopper, 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:39.520 one of the villain, I think it's the main villain 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:41.800 gets him with the car and he just like splatters 0:09:41.840 --> 0:09:46.480 like a like a water balloon full of blood. And yeah, 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:48.559 it's the dad from that seventies show who gets in 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:51.040 with the car. And I never trusted that seventies show 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:53.240 because of RoboCop. I knew what he was capable of. 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:55.439 Clarence Bodker, he's a great villain. But yeah, so he 0:09:55.520 --> 0:09:57.520 hits him with the car and he just turns to liquid. 0:09:57.559 --> 0:10:00.360 He's like a bag of soup and h and I 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:03.800 remember the villain he turns on the windshield wiper. Yeah 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:06.960 it's gross, but it's also there's tons of acid in 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:09.800 video games, right. Video games love this, I guess because 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:13.280 acids probably fun to animate. Yeah, and if you and 0:10:13.520 --> 0:10:15.679 a lot of games, if you're doing a platform game, right, 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:17.440 it's a it's a wonderful thing to have to fall 0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:20.559 into and sort of bounce out off. But my favorite 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:23.679 example is from Mortal Kombat two, which was like a 0:10:23.679 --> 0:10:27.439 major major game for me when I was younger, and 0:10:27.800 --> 0:10:30.400 in that you have two wonderful uses of acid. You 0:10:30.440 --> 0:10:34.240 have a stage called I think the Deadpool where you're 0:10:34.280 --> 0:10:37.720 fighting on a platform and there's just just green acid. 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:41.480 Uh it fills the room or ambiently bubbling, I can't 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:44.360 remember it's bubbling or not. But you if you upper 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:46.920 cut your opponent into the acid at the end of 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:51.000 the match for the fatality, then they just splash, they scream, 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:53.679 they disappear under the acid, and then when they float 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:56.920 up to the top, they're just a completely clean skeleton. 0:10:57.040 --> 0:11:01.440 Oh how long does that take? One second to seconds? Okay? Yeah, 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:04.280 And then of course that game also introduced the character Reptile, 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:09.800 who is a reptile, a lizard man ninja um, which 0:11:09.840 --> 0:11:11.680 I just you know, you just take that for granted now, 0:11:11.720 --> 0:11:13.920 but he also spits acids. So he takes his a 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:17.240 little mask off and goes and this, uh, this green 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:20.200 glob comes flying across the screen and burns you. One 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:22.839 of the most horrible acid scenes I remember from a 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:25.360 kid was from the movie The Fly. We shouldn't dwell 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:29.200 on this kind of great movie, but yeah, the fly 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:33.319 has digestive enzymes. I suppose that he sort of like 0:11:33.480 --> 0:11:39.080 spits out on people too homogenized their flesh. Yeah. I 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:41.880 think there's an early scene where Brundle fly the of course, 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:43.839 you know, if you haven't seen it, first of all, 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:47.560 go see it. But mad scientist and a fly their 0:11:47.880 --> 0:11:52.520 DNA is spliced via teleportation accident, and there's a scene 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:56.520 where he's recording himself feeding on something like just a 0:11:56.520 --> 0:11:59.280 bunch of sugary junk food, right, and you don't actually 0:11:59.320 --> 0:12:01.959 see it, happy just hear it, and it's horrific. And 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:06.440 then of course later he weaponizes this biological effect. And 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:10.120 speaking of weaponized acid biology, we would have to mention 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:12.040 I guess this will be our final example of the 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:16.439 xenomorph from the films. Uh So, when Ridley Scott's Alien, 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:19.000 you might remember this the old classic alien. We first 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:22.600 see the xenomorphous acid blood during the scene where, if 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:25.680 you'll remember, John Hurt's character gets a gets an alien 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:28.839 parasite attached to his face called a face hugger. Yea 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:33.160 like burns through his helmet attached. Yeah, yeah, it comes 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:35.280 through his face mask and then it's attached to his 0:12:35.360 --> 0:12:37.800 face and and they're trying to decide if they should 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:39.920 cut it off of him on the spaceship and Ian 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:43.600 Holme eventually decides to cut one of its fingers off 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:45.920 to see if they can remove it, and it squirts blood, 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:49.199 and this blood hits the floor and it sizzles when 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:51.680 it splashes on the floor, and then continues to eat 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:55.520 right through the material of the spacecraft's floor and then 0:12:55.640 --> 0:12:58.240 drops down through like two more floors, I think, through 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:01.640 the levels until it eventually stop reacting a few levels down, 0:13:01.840 --> 0:13:05.320 finally neutralizes and it goes through the entire hole. And 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:08.360 then Tom Skirt's character Captain Dallas, he says he's never 0:13:08.360 --> 0:13:12.560 seen anything like that before except quote molecular acid, which 0:13:12.600 --> 0:13:14.840 is funny that that term doesn't really make any sense 0:13:14.880 --> 0:13:18.360 since all acids are composed of molecules. Uh. And in 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:20.920 the sequels they correct this by saying the aliens have 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:24.199 concentrated acid for blood, which does make more sense in 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:27.880 the sense that they're suggesting it's not like vinegar or 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:30.320 some of their friendly acid that's highly deluded to a 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:35.760 safe concentration. It's a highly concentrated, strong acid. But later 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:38.520 in this episode, we should explore exactly what might be 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:41.800 going on in terms of the aliens blood, how it 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:44.360 could be that acidic, if there were something truly like 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:46.959 that in nature. Yes, we will circle back around to 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:50.080 the xenomorphs at the end. But anyway, so, why why 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:53.640 this obsession with acid? We we love this stuff. I mean, 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:55.640 it keeps showing up in our media all the time, 0:13:55.679 --> 0:13:57.720 even though we're not really we can't be bothered to 0:13:57.840 --> 0:14:02.480 learn all the chemistry of exactly what chemicals are are 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:04.680 out there that could do real harm to our body. 0:14:04.760 --> 0:14:07.079 So it's always just acid. You know, there's some acids. 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:11.000 It's just basically like a magical corrosive substance. Yeah, exactly. 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:13.839 So we we wanted to talk today about the real 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:17.360 science of strong acids, and I don't know to what 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:20.120 extent you can find chemicals in the real world that 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:24.360 match up to these the movie Acid and how close 0:14:24.440 --> 0:14:27.520 you can get. Yes, okay, So to give you the 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:31.640 basics before we get into the strongest acids out there 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:33.880 the movie Acid, we we should do a real simple 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:36.560 overview of acids, bases, and pH I'm not going to 0:14:36.640 --> 0:14:38.760 turn this into a chemistry class, but we do need 0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:42.720 to sort of explain how they work. So, first of all, 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:47.920 picture your periodic table and then go directly to square one. Hydrogen. 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:50.800 It's the most basic atom in the universe. It's got 0:14:50.880 --> 0:14:54.760 one proton and one electron, and most of the hydrogen 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:56.880 in the universe has no neutrons, but if you want 0:14:56.880 --> 0:14:59.400 to add one or two, you can get deuterium or tritium. 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:01.480 But we're not really concerned with that right now. So 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:05.600 your hydrogen atom one proton, one electron, and it's electrically 0:15:05.640 --> 0:15:08.440 neutral because it's balanced like that. The electron has a 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:13.000 negative charge, the proton has a positive charge. If hydrogen 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:17.040 loses its electron, it becomes a hydrogen ion, which is 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:20.680 just a proton. It's one single, lonely proton with an 0:15:20.760 --> 0:15:25.120 unbalanced positive charge, and of course nature hates that unbalanced 0:15:25.160 --> 0:15:28.240 positive charge. It wants to get back together, so that 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:31.000 lonely proton is going to be looking for a way 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:33.720 to join up with something that has a negative charge 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:38.480 and again become electrically neutral. So water is made of 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:42.920 the electrically neutral molecule H two. Oh. That's one oxygen 0:15:42.960 --> 0:15:46.480 atom bonded with two hydrogen atoms. And if one of 0:15:46.520 --> 0:15:50.160 the two hydrogen atoms in the water molecule breaks free, 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:52.200 it just runs off, says I'm gonna do my own 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:56.120 thing free of a water molecule, and leaves its electron 0:15:56.280 --> 0:15:59.880 with that water molecule you're left with a hydrogen ion 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:03.840 on which is just that positively charged free proton proton, 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:08.040 and then a hydroxide molecule which is O H minus. 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:11.200 It's a molecule with a negative charge with one oxygen 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:15.320 atom one hydrogen atom. Now, this can happen naturally in water. 0:16:15.440 --> 0:16:19.120 Sometimes this is called the the ionization of water autoionization 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:20.840 of water. You can just have water sitting there in 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:24.280 a glass and some subset of the molecules within it 0:16:24.360 --> 0:16:28.480 are going to undergo this reaction where a hydrogen proton 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:31.680 leaves one of the molecules, joins to another one, and 0:16:31.720 --> 0:16:36.400 that creates this hydroxide molecule OH negative, negatively charged. And 0:16:36.440 --> 0:16:40.400 then also and I H a molecule called hydronium, which 0:16:40.440 --> 0:16:44.400 is H three Oh. It's a positively charged water molecule 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:48.120 that has three hydrogens on it. And so here's where 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:51.600 we get into acids and basins bases. There are several 0:16:51.600 --> 0:16:54.520 different chemical definitions, but we're gonna go with the Bronze 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:58.960 stead Lowry definition because you know which other definition would 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:00.960 you go with? This is obviously the best. It's named 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:04.760 after the Danish chemist Johannus Nicolaus Brounze said and the 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:08.639 English chemist Thomas Martin Lowry. And so the way it 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:14.399 goes is this, an acid is a hydrogen ion donor, 0:17:14.440 --> 0:17:17.320 in other words, a proton donor. It's a chemical that 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:21.280 when you put it into water, it wants to send 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:26.920 free hydrogen ions, these protons out into the solution, and 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:30.760 in turn that increases the concentration of hydronium or H 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:34.679 three oh, that positively charged molecule. Is talking about the 0:17:34.720 --> 0:17:38.439 opposite of this is a base. A base is a 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:42.840 hydrogen ion recipient or a proton recipient. When you put 0:17:42.920 --> 0:17:47.480 it into water, it wants to increase the hydroxide concentration. 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:51.280 It makes more molecules of O H minus the negatively 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:54.760 charged variant of water. So what would be an example 0:17:54.800 --> 0:17:58.080 of this, Okay, So one would be, for example, hydrochloric acid. 0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:00.760 So you put hydrochloric acid in the water, and it 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:05.240 wants to break apart and donate that positively charged hydrogen 0:18:05.280 --> 0:18:09.359 ion to the water, creating some negatively charged chloride and 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:13.000 positively charged hydronium. And here hc L is the acid 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:16.320 and water is the base by the Bronze Dead Lowry definition. 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:19.040 But all this stuff about acids and bases is generally 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:22.800 going to be concerning aqueous solutions, in other words, putting 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:26.680 stuff in water. Uh. And so this has a really 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:29.600 awesome name, by the way, and it's known as protonation. 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:32.800 So when you add a strong acid to a water, 0:18:32.920 --> 0:18:37.440 because you're giving away those positively charged uh hydrogen ions, 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:41.160 you're proton ating the water. Uh and on. Of course, 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:42.680 on the other hand, you can use a base to 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:47.440 d protonate a solution. One more piece of terminology. You've 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:50.520 probably heard of the strength of acids and bases expressed 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:52.879 in terms of pH. They say, you know, an acid 0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:56.320 as a pH of three or pH of six. What 0:18:56.359 --> 0:18:59.720 does that mean? pH is just the concentration of those 0:18:59.800 --> 0:19:04.080 high hydrogen ions in a solution. So normal water that's neutral, 0:19:04.280 --> 0:19:07.280 and the neutral pH is usually said to be seven, 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:09.760 So that would be one times ten to the negative 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:14.200 seven moles per leader of hydrogen ions. And we're not 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:16.000 going to stay on this math for a long time, 0:19:16.000 --> 0:19:18.359 but just to be clear, a mole is just a 0:19:18.400 --> 0:19:21.080 measure of how many molecules you got in something, and 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:23.720 moles per leader would be the concentration of how many 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:27.640 molecules you've got per leader of water. Specifically, a mole 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:31.119 is six point o two and then some more numbers, 0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:33.520 but basically six point o two times ten to the 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:36.800 twenty three. There's a lot of molecules out there. Uh. 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:39.199 And so this is this is expressed by saying it 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:41.119 has a pH of seven. So if you have a 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:44.359 compound with a lower pH, that's gonna get more acidic. 0:19:44.760 --> 0:19:48.640 They donate protons harder, they say, take these protons, take them. 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:52.000 I can put that in um in perspective, what lemon 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:54.440 juice is it too? I believe, yeah, that's about right. 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:57.080 In fact, we can read a few a few examples 0:19:57.119 --> 0:19:59.560 of phs and and then also on the other end 0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:03.200 of the scale, uh, compounds with higher pH values are 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:08.040 stronger bases, they're more alkaline, they steal protons harder their 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:11.320 recipients of protons. Uh. And so just to give a 0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:14.280 few examples on the pH scale, I just found an 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:18.560 illustration online that gives some basic general ideas. Like we said, 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:21.640 distilled water is going to be a seven. It's neutral. 0:20:22.280 --> 0:20:24.679 That seawater is going to be a little more of 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:27.159 a base, it's more like an eight. And then you 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:30.399 get baking soda solution, it's a little more it's like 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:34.600 eight points something bleach is gonna be like thirteen. That's 0:20:34.640 --> 0:20:38.280 a strong base. But then going lower on the scale, 0:20:38.320 --> 0:20:40.879 acids are going to be things like vinegar is going 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:44.320 to be around a three or four. Orange juice is 0:20:44.320 --> 0:20:46.920 going to be around a three or a four. Uh. 0:20:47.040 --> 0:20:52.080 It's interesting that vinegar is between orange juice and carbonated beverages, 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:57.440 with carbonated beverages being higher acidic level than vinegar. Oh yeah, 0:20:57.800 --> 0:21:00.800 they usually say Coca cola is pretty urn acid, and 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:05.840 I think that was their original slogan. Taste the acid. 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:10.520 And then once you get really low, closer to zero 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:13.239 on the scale, you've got something like battery acid. Just 0:21:13.480 --> 0:21:19.040 really intense, strong acid. Take all the protons, take them all, right. 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:21.959 And that's that is often where we see the at 0:21:22.000 --> 0:21:24.480 least the idea of Hollywood acids in that area, The 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:27.200 idea like this is battery acid, this is industrial acid. 0:21:27.480 --> 0:21:30.800 This is highly corrosive stuff that will pick your skeleton dry. Yeah, 0:21:30.880 --> 0:21:33.320 but I should point out that we're gonna be talking 0:21:33.320 --> 0:21:38.080 about how strongly acids can dissolve things like organic materials today. 0:21:38.160 --> 0:21:41.800 And so because the acid that reacts with you does 0:21:41.840 --> 0:21:45.800 so through a chemical reaction, the chemicals involved matter, so 0:21:45.840 --> 0:21:49.400 some acids might actually have a lower pH than others 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:53.520 but still be less harmful. For example, hydrofluoric acid, when 0:21:53.520 --> 0:21:55.760 we're going to talk about today, is one of the 0:21:55.760 --> 0:21:58.399 most deadly acids out there, but it doesn't necessarily have 0:21:58.440 --> 0:22:02.520 the lowest pH. And then when we're talking about the 0:22:02.600 --> 0:22:06.439 deadly aspects of acids, another thing we'll touch on two 0:22:06.640 --> 0:22:09.480 is that sometimes it's not only the corrosive aspects of 0:22:09.520 --> 0:22:12.080 the acid, but what happens when it when it has 0:22:12.200 --> 0:22:14.920 when it undergoes a chemical reaction, what kind of gases 0:22:14.960 --> 0:22:17.320 can be admitted there. Some of these examples you end 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:21.600 up with with toxic gases that are released when the 0:22:21.640 --> 0:22:25.080 acid comes into contact with the with the right substance exactly. 0:22:25.119 --> 0:22:27.719 And another thing tying into hydrofluoric acid, which we're going 0:22:27.760 --> 0:22:29.760 to talk about a little more in a minute, uh, 0:22:29.880 --> 0:22:33.720 the danger associated with it isn't just from say, topical burns. 0:22:33.760 --> 0:22:36.560 It doesn't just burn you from the outside in and 0:22:36.560 --> 0:22:40.200 and kill you that way. By getting into your skin 0:22:40.320 --> 0:22:43.440 and then getting into your blood, it can cause systemic 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:46.040 problems that can kill you, for example by causing a 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:48.960 heart attack right and for longed exposure to Some of 0:22:48.960 --> 0:22:51.119 these have also been linked to cancer, So there are 0:22:51.119 --> 0:22:54.359 a number of ways that these these dangerous substances can 0:22:54.560 --> 0:22:57.119 can harm you. Yeah, okay, So let's say, based on 0:22:57.160 --> 0:22:59.240 everything we've just looked at, you're going to try to 0:22:59.359 --> 0:23:03.399 dissolve a organic material such as a batman. So you 0:23:03.440 --> 0:23:05.560 have a very strong acid, so you've got a vat 0:23:05.640 --> 0:23:09.440 of it, and you put that acid into an aqueous solution, 0:23:09.520 --> 0:23:12.280 meaning water. So you've got your acid dissolved into water, 0:23:13.040 --> 0:23:15.159 and then you put your batman in. What's going to 0:23:15.280 --> 0:23:18.600 happen to your batman? Well, depending on the makeup of 0:23:18.640 --> 0:23:21.040 the solution, what's probably gonna happen is that the acidic 0:23:21.119 --> 0:23:25.639 solution will begin breaking the chemical bonds of molecules on 0:23:25.680 --> 0:23:28.719 the outer surface of the batman, so that you know, 0:23:28.760 --> 0:23:32.360 the excess of protons and charged molecules can form bonds 0:23:32.400 --> 0:23:36.600 with other molecules in that batman material, and assuming it 0:23:36.640 --> 0:23:38.600 can eat through the batman's suit, is going to start 0:23:38.640 --> 0:23:41.240 hacking up the lipids and the protein molecules in the 0:23:41.240 --> 0:23:44.959 batman's skin, forming new chemical bonds and slowly turning this 0:23:45.200 --> 0:23:53.800 imbalanced acid water batman solution into a more homogeneous gloup. Basically, Yes, however, 0:23:53.840 --> 0:23:56.199 there are probably some materials in the Batman and the 0:23:56.200 --> 0:23:59.000 Batman's suit that will not react with the acid, meaning 0:23:59.000 --> 0:24:02.280 you're not likely to end up with a perfectly homogeneous mixture. 0:24:02.320 --> 0:24:06.400 You might get some glupe with some lumps in it. Essentially, 0:24:06.680 --> 0:24:10.880 the villain's acid just wants to bring Batman into equilibrium. 0:24:11.080 --> 0:24:13.160 Isn't that a nice way of thinking about it? Yeah? 0:24:13.200 --> 0:24:16.840 He is definitely a character out of balance with the world, right, 0:24:16.920 --> 0:24:19.520 and so unless somebody perhaps comes along with a dump 0:24:19.560 --> 0:24:22.679 truck through full of a week base like baking soda 0:24:22.720 --> 0:24:25.760 to pour in and neutralize the solution, that's what's going 0:24:25.800 --> 0:24:28.000 to happen. Though I'm not sure exactly how that would 0:24:28.040 --> 0:24:29.639 work out for the Batman if he's still in the 0:24:29.720 --> 0:24:33.320 vat while they're neutralizing it. Yeah, would it? Would there 0:24:33.359 --> 0:24:36.960 be an explosion, an eruption? I don't know that. I 0:24:37.240 --> 0:24:41.520 think the classic Batman TV series, of course, with its 0:24:41.600 --> 0:24:45.840 rigorous approach to science, you would probably see Robin show 0:24:45.920 --> 0:24:48.399 up dump the base in. Everything would turn to a 0:24:48.440 --> 0:24:51.719 big foam and uh everything, it would It would be 0:24:51.720 --> 0:24:56.600 like a foam slippery dance fight party. Yeah, yeah, everybody 0:24:56.640 --> 0:24:59.720 does the twist. All right, We're gonna take a quick 0:24:59.760 --> 0:25:01.640 break and when we come back, we're going to look 0:25:01.640 --> 0:25:11.600 at a rogues gallery of dangerous acids. All right, we're back. 0:25:12.080 --> 0:25:14.639 Well let's yeah, let's let's roll through a few examples 0:25:14.840 --> 0:25:18.679 of some powerful, potent real world acids. And again we're 0:25:18.720 --> 0:25:21.760 not we're gonna try not to just really chemistry class 0:25:21.800 --> 0:25:24.040 you too much on these, but we're gonna, you know, 0:25:24.240 --> 0:25:28.159 roll through the some of the basic health ratings and 0:25:28.280 --> 0:25:31.440 um and and attributes of these substances. Well, we talked 0:25:31.480 --> 0:25:35.399 about early on the idea of these these acids that 0:25:35.400 --> 0:25:39.040 occur in biology, and one acid that definitely occurs in 0:25:39.119 --> 0:25:42.920 biology is hydrochloric acid HCl. So this is going to 0:25:42.960 --> 0:25:46.760 be a bond between hydrogen and chlorine and it gets 0:25:46.760 --> 0:25:49.080 the job done. And I want to note that, uh 0:25:49.080 --> 0:25:51.320 these properties are coming off of the m s d 0:25:51.560 --> 0:25:54.720 S as Material Safety data sheet. It's a good sheet. Yeah, 0:25:55.240 --> 0:25:58.160 if you if you're interested in pretty much any substance, 0:25:58.400 --> 0:26:02.080 any chemical substance, you can journal. We find um an 0:26:02.200 --> 0:26:05.760 MSDS on on the internet for this and uh it's 0:26:06.200 --> 0:26:08.400 it can be a little bit interesting, a little bit technical, 0:26:08.920 --> 0:26:11.639 depending on how much that you read. Uh So, the 0:26:11.680 --> 0:26:15.439 appearance of hydrochloric acid, it would not work in a 0:26:15.480 --> 0:26:18.240 Mortal Kombat game because it's it's colorless, though it is 0:26:18.480 --> 0:26:22.679 a fuming liquid, has a pungent odor of hydrogen chloride, 0:26:22.880 --> 0:26:25.440 which means you're you're doing the bank vault with Batman 0:26:25.560 --> 0:26:29.679 might be able to sniff it out. And um, when 0:26:29.760 --> 0:26:33.520 it comes to its solubility, infinite solubility, and water with 0:26:33.640 --> 0:26:39.240 slight evolution of heat, not necessarily boiling, but slight evolution. Right, 0:26:39.320 --> 0:26:42.879 And so the the MSDS comes with these ratings. It's 0:26:42.920 --> 0:26:44.879 a great rating system. It's kind of like the the 0:26:45.000 --> 0:26:47.399 m p a A for acids. Know what you're getting 0:26:47.400 --> 0:26:52.000 ahead of time exactly. Um, the most of the ones 0:26:52.040 --> 0:26:55.040 we looked at use the JT. Baker s A f 0:26:55.200 --> 0:26:58.679 T data scores essentially given it. Like you know, it's 0:26:58.720 --> 0:27:00.800 kind of like character classes and done and dragons. Right, 0:27:00.920 --> 0:27:07.080 it's health rating, it's flammability rating, reactivity rating, contact rating, etcetera. Um, 0:27:07.160 --> 0:27:09.280 I'm not gonna deal with all these, but but as 0:27:09.280 --> 0:27:11.800 far as hydrochloric acid goes, it's health rating is a three, 0:27:11.880 --> 0:27:16.000 which is severe like a poison level zero in flammability. 0:27:16.000 --> 0:27:19.639 Reactivity rating is a too. Contact rating is three that 0:27:19.680 --> 0:27:22.959 means it's severe. It's corrosive. Do not touch it, so 0:27:23.119 --> 0:27:25.120 you need to if you're handling this stuff in the lab, 0:27:25.200 --> 0:27:28.800 you need some protective measures in place. Yeah, it's highly corrosive, 0:27:28.840 --> 0:27:32.240 so it's dangerous for us to inhale if we should 0:27:32.320 --> 0:27:34.439 not come into contact with it on our eyes, on 0:27:34.480 --> 0:27:38.000 our skin. Do not ingest it. Uh. You don't want 0:27:38.000 --> 0:27:43.119 to undergo chronic light exposure to it either. Um. And 0:27:43.119 --> 0:27:45.639 then oh yeah, when it's heated to decomposition, it emits 0:27:45.680 --> 0:27:49.359 toxic hydrogen chloride fumes and will react with water or 0:27:49.440 --> 0:27:53.480 steam to produce heat and toxic and corrosive fumes. Yeah. 0:27:53.560 --> 0:27:55.919 But of course, as I mentioned earlier, despite all this, 0:27:56.160 --> 0:27:59.600 you've got hydrochloric acid in your body, that's right. I mean, 0:27:59.640 --> 0:28:02.520 this is the stomach acid. This is uh, this is 0:28:02.600 --> 0:28:04.520 part of you. And really it's an important thing to 0:28:04.600 --> 0:28:07.160 keep in mind with acids in general. Like acids are 0:28:07.240 --> 0:28:10.560 part of our chemical world. Acids are part of the 0:28:10.640 --> 0:28:13.800 chemistry of life. They're part of our biochemistry, uh, in 0:28:14.200 --> 0:28:18.679 varying degrees. So yeah, the even though we like to 0:28:18.840 --> 0:28:22.960 position acid in that vat of of man made peril, uh, 0:28:23.000 --> 0:28:26.400 it's really just a part of our world. So parietal 0:28:26.400 --> 0:28:29.040 cells produce hydrochloric acid in our body. It's a strong 0:28:29.080 --> 0:28:31.399 acid helps you break down your food. The acid in 0:28:31.440 --> 0:28:33.600 your stomach is so concentrated that if you were to 0:28:33.600 --> 0:28:36.440 place a drop on a piece of wood, it would 0:28:36.440 --> 0:28:40.400 eat right through it. Really yeah wow. And the G 0:28:40.520 --> 0:28:44.360 cells produce gastron, a hormone that facilitates the production of 0:28:44.440 --> 0:28:48.320 hydrochloric acid by the parietal cells. So the stomach, because 0:28:48.360 --> 0:28:49.920 of course, one of the big questions is, well, why 0:28:49.960 --> 0:28:53.160 doesn't the acid in our stomach consumers right, Well, the 0:28:53.200 --> 0:28:56.479 stomach is producted by the epithelial cells, which produce and 0:28:56.520 --> 0:29:02.280 secrete a bicarbonate rich solution that coats the mucosa. Okay, 0:29:02.280 --> 0:29:05.000 so that's taking the method of saving the batman by 0:29:05.080 --> 0:29:08.120 dumping a bunch of baking soda into the bat Yeah. Yeah, 0:29:08.120 --> 0:29:11.560 putting in a base exactly. The bicarbonate is an alkaline, 0:29:11.880 --> 0:29:15.280 A base neutralizes the acid is secreted by those parietal cells, 0:29:15.280 --> 0:29:19.040 producing water in the process. And this continuous supply of 0:29:19.080 --> 0:29:22.000 bicarbonate is the main way that your stomach protects itself 0:29:22.280 --> 0:29:27.160 from autodigestion um and the overall acidic environment. If you're 0:29:27.280 --> 0:29:29.960 if you're tummy. So uh so, it sounds like this 0:29:30.280 --> 0:29:32.960 process of creating the base to neutralize it is not 0:29:33.120 --> 0:29:35.920 something you want going wrong in your body. Right, yeah, 0:29:35.920 --> 0:29:38.600 that's one you generally what a good a good balance 0:29:38.960 --> 0:29:42.800 in your stomach chemistry. Yeah, okay, so hydrochloric acid, that's 0:29:42.840 --> 0:29:46.720 nothing to be toyed around with. But there are stronger 0:29:46.760 --> 0:29:49.880 and more dangerous acids out there, and I think maybe 0:29:49.880 --> 0:29:52.320 we should move on. So if if hydrochloric acid was 0:29:52.400 --> 0:29:55.640 sort of the I don't know, the riddler of the 0:29:55.720 --> 0:29:58.200 acid rogues gallery, I think it's time to move onto 0:29:58.240 --> 0:30:03.520 the joker. Yes, the joker would definitely be sulfuric acid, right, yeah, 0:30:03.560 --> 0:30:06.000 And this is one I would say of all the 0:30:06.000 --> 0:30:09.240 acids they're technical names, sulfuric acid is the one that 0:30:09.360 --> 0:30:13.880 is that is most commonly used in fiction, and not 0:30:13.960 --> 0:30:16.360 without a real deep understanding of what it is. But 0:30:16.440 --> 0:30:19.320 like the name itself sounds a little scary, sulfur It's 0:30:19.360 --> 0:30:23.560 it's hellish, right, sulfuric the the name itself sounds a 0:30:23.600 --> 0:30:26.680 little bit evil. Well, chemically, it's H two S O four, 0:30:26.800 --> 0:30:30.719 So that's hydrogen with sulfur and oxygen and it forms 0:30:30.760 --> 0:30:36.120 this molecule that is very very keen to protonate. Oh yes, 0:30:37.000 --> 0:30:40.920 so it's it's a clear, oily liquid. It's odorless, so 0:30:41.080 --> 0:30:45.440 sorry bank vault dude, both of these so far clear? Right? Yeah? Yeah? 0:30:45.520 --> 0:30:49.200 Nothing green? Why why not green or orange? It's also 0:30:49.600 --> 0:30:53.000 miscable with water, which means that it forms a homogeneous 0:30:53.000 --> 0:30:57.920 mixture when added to water, liberates a fair amount of heat. Um, 0:30:57.960 --> 0:31:00.840 And it's highly corrosive and dangerous to humans just across 0:31:00.880 --> 0:31:03.960 the board, much like hydrochloric acid. So how does it 0:31:04.040 --> 0:31:07.400 compare in terms of the ratings? So hydrochloric acid, for 0:31:07.400 --> 0:31:10.080 for the health rating, we had a three, and for 0:31:10.160 --> 0:31:13.720 the contact corrosivity rating we had a three, right right, 0:31:13.800 --> 0:31:16.600 three on both yeah, and had a had a two 0:31:16.640 --> 0:31:20.920 for reactivity and a zero for flammability. This time around 0:31:21.000 --> 0:31:25.320 we have another zero for flammability. Um. However, reactivity went 0:31:25.400 --> 0:31:27.040 up from a two to the to a three, so 0:31:27.080 --> 0:31:31.000 we have severe water reactivity here. Uh. And then as 0:31:31.040 --> 0:31:34.560 far as health rating goes, we have another three, so 0:31:34.600 --> 0:31:38.400 it's just a severe poisonous. But contact rating goes up 0:31:38.400 --> 0:31:41.320 from three to four from severe to extreme, so it's 0:31:41.320 --> 0:31:45.400 extremely corrosive. How do they decide what word goes with that? 0:31:45.440 --> 0:31:49.719 I might say severe is worse than extreme. Well, I 0:31:49.720 --> 0:31:53.280 don't know. It's it's going to be specific to the JT. 0:31:53.400 --> 0:31:55.760 Baker s a f T data score. I guess because 0:31:55.800 --> 0:31:57.800 I need a good poet to go through and annotate 0:31:57.840 --> 0:32:00.320 this data sheet instead of like a single like a 0:32:00.400 --> 0:32:03.600 nice description exactly everyone encounter with it, or an example 0:32:03.640 --> 0:32:07.520 from a movie, right like this is a you know, 0:32:07.600 --> 0:32:11.160 this is a Mortal Kombat two level acid. Yeah, so 0:32:11.480 --> 0:32:13.560 if you're going for this movie kind of acid, I 0:32:13.800 --> 0:32:15.960 think we're we're getting more into the territory here of 0:32:16.000 --> 0:32:19.520 acids that are really gonna maybe not behave exactly like 0:32:19.560 --> 0:32:22.400 the movie acid you're used to, but get closer to 0:32:22.520 --> 0:32:26.040 that than than many other things would right now. And 0:32:26.280 --> 0:32:29.400 some other bad stuff about sulphuric acid. When heated to decomposition, 0:32:29.680 --> 0:32:33.880 it produces toxic fumes of oxides of sulfur uh. It 0:32:33.920 --> 0:32:36.400 will react with water or steam to produce toxic and 0:32:36.440 --> 0:32:40.120 corrosive fumes. It reacts with the carbonates to generate carbon 0:32:40.160 --> 0:32:44.440 dioxide gas, and with cyanides and sulfides to form poisonous 0:32:44.600 --> 0:32:49.800 hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen sulfide, respectively. It all sounds lovely. Yeah, 0:32:50.040 --> 0:32:52.840 So Again, that's something though that is often I don't 0:32:52.840 --> 0:32:56.400 feel like that that's utilized the the the the resulting 0:32:56.440 --> 0:33:01.280 toxic gas of acid interactions and films, like they were 0:33:01.320 --> 0:33:04.840 so concerned with what happens when the xenomorph blood gets 0:33:04.840 --> 0:33:07.160 on you or your armor or the floor, But how 0:33:07.200 --> 0:33:10.120 about any resulting fumes. Well, yeah, we're we're always so 0:33:10.200 --> 0:33:14.680 much more concerned with liquids than with gases. One example 0:33:14.720 --> 0:33:17.920 is volcanoes in movies. You know, volcanoes in real life. 0:33:17.960 --> 0:33:20.560 I think they're way more likely to suffocate and kill 0:33:20.600 --> 0:33:24.000 you with gases emitted or or by covering you in 0:33:24.120 --> 0:33:26.560 ash and and ejecta and stuff like that. But what 0:33:26.640 --> 0:33:28.360 you see in the movies is the lava. People are 0:33:28.440 --> 0:33:31.600 running away from liquid lava rolling down the hill towards them. 0:33:31.840 --> 0:33:34.840 Your volcano is very likely to kill you, but it's 0:33:34.960 --> 0:33:38.480 very not likely to kill you that way. Another thing 0:33:38.560 --> 0:33:40.440 that this is going off topic a little bit, but 0:33:40.560 --> 0:33:45.160 flamethrowers in a confined space, it's a staple of our entertainment, 0:33:45.480 --> 0:33:47.840 and yet it is such a bad idea to just 0:33:48.040 --> 0:33:51.320 rapidly consume. I mean, a flamethrower in general is a 0:33:51.320 --> 0:33:55.520 bad idea. A real flamethrower, quick way to suffocate yourself. 0:33:55.520 --> 0:33:57.720 That's a greatay to sufocate yourself, and it's rarely rarely 0:33:57.800 --> 0:33:59.840 is that explored? The only example I can think of 0:34:00.000 --> 0:34:04.160 offhand is that there is a wonderful Nazi zombie film 0:34:04.440 --> 0:34:09.040 from the seventies or eighties titled shock Waves, and there's 0:34:09.040 --> 0:34:11.160 a scene where they don't have a flamethrower, but they 0:34:11.239 --> 0:34:14.000 light some flares, I think to ward off the creatures, 0:34:14.239 --> 0:34:16.040 and they're in a confined space and it just eats 0:34:16.080 --> 0:34:18.600 up all the oxygen and everybody's like gasping for breath. 0:34:18.760 --> 0:34:21.200 And I remember the time thinking, Ah, thank you movie 0:34:21.239 --> 0:34:24.680 for for for thinking a little bit. That's smart. Yeah, okay, 0:34:24.680 --> 0:34:28.080 but back to sulfuric acid. So sulfuric acid, based on 0:34:28.160 --> 0:34:30.239 how dangerous it sounds, You're you're probably never going to 0:34:30.320 --> 0:34:33.800 have this in your home, right, well, not necessarily. Now 0:34:34.400 --> 0:34:36.440 you might be able to get sulfuric acid in the 0:34:36.480 --> 0:34:41.960 home in some deluded uh concentrations. So a n study 0:34:42.040 --> 0:34:44.799 in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery that 0:34:44.840 --> 0:34:48.919 I came across was called cutaneous burns caused by sulfuric 0:34:49.000 --> 0:34:54.440 acid drain cleaner. Yeah. Pretty horrible. So a lot of 0:34:54.440 --> 0:34:57.120 the commercial drain cleaner you're gonna be getting is actually 0:34:57.120 --> 0:34:59.640 going to be based on a strong base rather than 0:34:59.680 --> 0:35:02.239 a strang long acid. So it might have something kind 0:35:02.280 --> 0:35:05.960 of like lie in it to dissolve uh, to dissolve 0:35:06.040 --> 0:35:09.320 materials and the drain to do some some alkaline hydrolysis 0:35:09.360 --> 0:35:11.480 and clear it out, get all that hair and gunk 0:35:11.520 --> 0:35:14.839 out of there. But also there are some preparations made 0:35:14.840 --> 0:35:19.440 with strong acids, such as highly concentrated solutions of sulfuric acid, 0:35:19.880 --> 0:35:22.920 and and some people will sell these and you can 0:35:22.960 --> 0:35:27.160 buy them. And this has caused accidental and sometimes intentional 0:35:27.480 --> 0:35:31.279 burns in the home. So this study looked at a 0:35:31.400 --> 0:35:35.760 period of thirteen years ending in May nine six, looking 0:35:35.760 --> 0:35:39.719 at children and adults who sustained sulfuric acid burns in 0:35:39.760 --> 0:35:42.839 the home through products like these, And it looked at 0:35:42.840 --> 0:35:46.000 twenty one patients. There were thirteen kids and eight adults. 0:35:46.200 --> 0:35:48.040 And I just want to read the results. They say 0:35:48.120 --> 0:35:52.800 in eight instances the sulfuric acid burn was accidental, whereas 0:35:52.840 --> 0:35:56.360 in thirteen cases sulfuric acid was used as a weapon 0:35:57.120 --> 0:36:00.120 media and total body surface area burned was five or 0:36:00.200 --> 0:36:05.600 scent or a range of one. Approximately fifty percent of 0:36:05.640 --> 0:36:09.200 burns involved the face and the neck. Skin grafting was 0:36:09.239 --> 0:36:12.879 required in fourteen patients, or sixty six percent. And it's 0:36:13.000 --> 0:36:16.960 estimated that nationwide, approximately three thousand injuries per year are 0:36:16.960 --> 0:36:19.760 related to drain cleaners and that one third of these 0:36:19.800 --> 0:36:24.640 involved cutaneous burns. So this is, uh, this is one 0:36:24.920 --> 0:36:28.319 kind of scary fact about what sulfuric acid can do 0:36:29.000 --> 0:36:31.880 outside of the lab. And this does remind me that 0:36:31.960 --> 0:36:34.000 in um, you know a lot of films and TV, 0:36:34.200 --> 0:36:38.600 and and certainly in horror literature, uh, drain cleaner is 0:36:38.800 --> 0:36:41.960 often used that kind of household horror. This thing that 0:36:42.200 --> 0:36:44.800 is uh, you know, when you used correctly, is certainly 0:36:44.840 --> 0:36:46.359 just a part of our lives and we don't think 0:36:46.400 --> 0:36:49.400 about it, but if you turn it around, it becomes 0:36:49.440 --> 0:36:52.800 this horrible, in human thing. And uh, and I should 0:36:52.800 --> 0:36:55.480 also point out of view some people might have might 0:36:55.520 --> 0:36:57.520 have missed this in this episode because it was kind 0:36:57.520 --> 0:37:00.279 of maybe we're bearing the lead a little bit, but uh. 0:37:00.560 --> 0:37:03.360 The most recent Creepy posta episode The Christian and I 0:37:03.400 --> 0:37:07.080 did gets into the into the issue of acid attacks 0:37:07.200 --> 0:37:11.319 and the restoration of surgical restoration of individuals who have 0:37:11.920 --> 0:37:15.160 experienced act. Yeah, so it mentions the like the grafting 0:37:15.239 --> 0:37:17.839 that was mentioned in this study. Uh, and so yeah, 0:37:17.880 --> 0:37:19.480 I mean that's a horrible thing to think about. It 0:37:19.520 --> 0:37:22.360 in real life being used as a weapon probably doesn't 0:37:22.360 --> 0:37:24.880 behave exactly the same way we do see the movie. 0:37:24.920 --> 0:37:27.400 Acid behaving are certainly not as rapidly, but at the 0:37:27.400 --> 0:37:31.640 same time can cause it very severe burns and damage 0:37:31.680 --> 0:37:34.440 to the body. So it's not something to mess around with. 0:37:35.400 --> 0:37:37.879 But next, let's look at one more rogue in our 0:37:37.960 --> 0:37:40.319 in our rogues gallery of dangerous acids, and I think 0:37:40.320 --> 0:37:42.200 this one is going to be one of the most interesting. 0:37:42.360 --> 0:37:46.080 This is hydrofluoric acid or h F, made of a 0:37:46.120 --> 0:37:49.920 bond of hydrogen and fluorine. Let's look at the MSDS 0:37:50.000 --> 0:37:54.160 scores here on this one. So health rating. Our previous 0:37:54.160 --> 0:37:57.319 two examples were both three, which were severe. This one 0:37:57.360 --> 0:38:01.000 is a four. This one is extremely poisonous. Uh. This 0:38:01.040 --> 0:38:05.240 one also has a zero on flammability. Uh. Its reactivity 0:38:05.360 --> 0:38:08.040 rating is a mere two, so that's down from three 0:38:08.560 --> 0:38:11.680 that we had on sulphuric acid. And then it's contact 0:38:11.840 --> 0:38:16.240 rating is a four extremely corrosive just like sulfuric acid. Yeah, 0:38:16.600 --> 0:38:19.640 so it's a colorless fuming liquid. Uh. It has a 0:38:19.760 --> 0:38:24.399 very very acrid odor. Do not breathe the fumes, and 0:38:24.440 --> 0:38:29.279 it is infinitely soluble. Now, this this stuff because of 0:38:29.320 --> 0:38:33.360 the nature of it, the hydrogen fluorine bond or the 0:38:33.440 --> 0:38:38.080 hydrogen fluoride, it has a very unique sort of reactive 0:38:38.120 --> 0:38:41.960 profile that's right on contact with metals. It liberates hydrogen 0:38:42.040 --> 0:38:46.000 gas on heating to decomposition. It can yield toxic fumes 0:38:46.040 --> 0:38:51.000 of fluorides, and it attacks glass and other silicon containing compounds. 0:38:51.000 --> 0:38:54.960 It reacts with silica to produce silicon tetrafluoride, which is 0:38:55.040 --> 0:38:58.640 also a hazardous colorless gas. Yeah. Now we should linger 0:38:58.680 --> 0:39:01.360 on that last fact for a moment, because what do 0:39:01.480 --> 0:39:06.000 we say here, Hydrogen fluoride can dissolve glass. Yeah, most 0:39:06.000 --> 0:39:08.719 of the time. Glass is great for storing chemicals because 0:39:08.760 --> 0:39:11.160 it's very nonreactive. You can put stuff in a glass 0:39:11.200 --> 0:39:13.440 container and it will sit there. It doesn't it doesn't 0:39:13.480 --> 0:39:16.720 react with what's inside it. Glass is made of mostly 0:39:16.880 --> 0:39:19.680 silicon dioxide silica, same stuff as you know a lot 0:39:19.680 --> 0:39:24.520 of rocks and sand, But hydrogen fluoride smashes up those 0:39:24.520 --> 0:39:28.640 silicon dioxide bonds in order to replace them. With silicon 0:39:28.760 --> 0:39:32.840 fluorine bonds, and so for this reason you can't store 0:39:32.840 --> 0:39:34.239 it in glass. You have to store it in a 0:39:34.280 --> 0:39:37.480 special container, often one made out of something that won't 0:39:37.520 --> 0:39:40.600 react with it, like polyethylene plastic, but a few other 0:39:40.680 --> 0:39:44.799 materials will work. And I wanted to talk about a 0:39:44.840 --> 0:39:47.680 couple of videos that I found on the Internet that 0:39:47.680 --> 0:39:51.040 are very interesting dealing with hydrogen fluoride. And if you 0:39:51.040 --> 0:39:52.960 want to watch these, if you're in a physician, to 0:39:53.040 --> 0:39:55.880 watch these as you listen to the podcast episode. We 0:39:55.920 --> 0:39:58.120 will include links to these in the landing page for 0:39:58.200 --> 0:39:59.759 this episode is stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. 0:40:00.200 --> 0:40:03.200 So these were done by a group that puts out 0:40:03.280 --> 0:40:06.880 chemistry videos on the Internet called periodic videos or periodic 0:40:06.920 --> 0:40:09.920 table videos. It's out of believe the Chemistry Department of 0:40:10.040 --> 0:40:12.480 University of Nottingham, and there are a lot of fun 0:40:12.520 --> 0:40:16.480 They do some experiments with some very unsettling chemicals. One 0:40:16.520 --> 0:40:20.560 of them was hydrogen fluoride, where they they decided to 0:40:20.600 --> 0:40:22.879 put a light bulb in the hydrogen fluoride. So it's 0:40:22.880 --> 0:40:25.680 a live light bulb with power running to it, lighting 0:40:25.760 --> 0:40:29.719 up half submerged in a container of hydrogen fluoride. And 0:40:29.719 --> 0:40:32.279 what do you know, after a little while sitting in 0:40:32.360 --> 0:40:36.080 the solution, the glass part of the light bulb breaks off, 0:40:36.200 --> 0:40:38.880 and it breaks off in a very strange way, cleanly, 0:40:39.040 --> 0:40:42.640 with a circle around where the surface of the acid 0:40:42.920 --> 0:40:46.840 is is lining the outside of the glass bulb, and 0:40:47.000 --> 0:40:48.920 it just kind of shears it off as if it 0:40:48.960 --> 0:40:52.120 had been scored and then removed. And that, of course 0:40:52.200 --> 0:40:56.040 is pretty freakingly freaky because then the filament immediately comes 0:40:56.040 --> 0:40:58.480 off and it starts kind of sparking. But then they 0:40:58.480 --> 0:41:01.920 did another video which I thought was really interesting, and 0:41:01.960 --> 0:41:04.320 this one's really worth a watch. So this is comparing 0:41:04.440 --> 0:41:08.319 the flesh dissolving properties of three different acids, actually the 0:41:08.360 --> 0:41:10.920 three we've just talked about. This is the one I watched, 0:41:10.960 --> 0:41:13.400 and uh, yeah, this is a lot of it's fantastic. 0:41:13.520 --> 0:41:15.759 So in all three cases, what they did is they 0:41:15.760 --> 0:41:18.879 got a raw chicken leg and they suspended it from 0:41:18.880 --> 0:41:22.520 a string partially submerged in the acid. Uh, And then 0:41:22.600 --> 0:41:25.520 the states of the three chicken legs are monitored. And 0:41:25.560 --> 0:41:27.160 the three acids they did, like we said, are the 0:41:27.160 --> 0:41:31.160 ones we've just talked about, hydrogen chloride or HCl, sulfuric 0:41:31.160 --> 0:41:34.120 acid or H two s O four and then hydrofluoric 0:41:34.120 --> 0:41:38.840 acid or HF. Now, the the sort of the profile 0:41:38.920 --> 0:41:41.920 we saw affecting the chicken leg was very similar for 0:41:41.960 --> 0:41:45.200 the hydrogen chloride and the sulfuric acid, wouldn't you say, yes, 0:41:45.719 --> 0:41:47.640 uh yeah, they seem to do the same thing, which 0:41:47.680 --> 0:41:51.240 is that after about five minutes, not really any noticeable changes. 0:41:51.280 --> 0:41:53.960 I'm sure if that chicken leg could feel it probably 0:41:54.000 --> 0:41:57.280 wouldn't feel good, But you don't really notice any burning 0:41:57.280 --> 0:42:01.360 on the outside. After thirty minutes, still nothing really noticeable. 0:42:01.440 --> 0:42:04.759 So this already is not exactly lining up with what 0:42:04.800 --> 0:42:07.080 we know about movie acid right right, And these are 0:42:07.200 --> 0:42:11.839 best in our brightest ATHLETs, yeah, exactly. But overnight some 0:42:12.000 --> 0:42:14.680 really interesting stuff started to happen with these two. So 0:42:14.719 --> 0:42:19.400 the previously clear solution takes on a dark pigment, and 0:42:19.480 --> 0:42:21.799 the part of the chicken that has been submerged has 0:42:21.880 --> 0:42:26.279 turned into this dark, viscous jelly that drips off of 0:42:26.320 --> 0:42:29.720 the bone when you lifted up. Uh. And then after 0:42:29.760 --> 0:42:31.480 that they went a whole hog where they cut the 0:42:31.520 --> 0:42:34.200 string and just dunked the whole chicken leg in and 0:42:34.320 --> 0:42:37.600 it's gross. It just continues to darken the acid solution, 0:42:37.719 --> 0:42:41.560 turn it into this gloopy, dark and jelly, and it 0:42:41.719 --> 0:42:44.560 it sort of begins to liquify the outer layers of 0:42:44.600 --> 0:42:47.160 the chicken leg. Don't know what what would have happened 0:42:47.160 --> 0:42:50.720 if they just kept it going for weeks after after 0:42:50.800 --> 0:42:55.480 a day, it was not looking good. It was thoroughly unappetizing, 0:42:56.320 --> 0:42:58.480 that is for sure. Yeah, I don't know. People just 0:42:58.560 --> 0:43:00.960 don't for some reason, you want to eat a piece 0:43:01.000 --> 0:43:02.880 of chicken. You don't want to eat some chicken jelly, 0:43:02.960 --> 0:43:07.000 but yet you like grape jelly. Yeah, well, um, well 0:43:07.000 --> 0:43:09.880 there you know, there are different jellifications of flesh that 0:43:09.920 --> 0:43:13.440 are consumed arthur in like French cuisine. Oh I suppose so, yeah, 0:43:13.520 --> 0:43:18.239 that's right. What's it called aspect? Yeah? Okay, moving on 0:43:18.280 --> 0:43:21.400 now now, So that's hydrogen chloride and sulfuric acid. But 0:43:21.440 --> 0:43:25.960 the real strange one contributing here is the hydrofluoric acid, 0:43:26.280 --> 0:43:27.839 this being the one that we just covered, the one 0:43:27.880 --> 0:43:31.760 that dissolves glass. Yeah, and so similar profile at the beginning. 0:43:31.760 --> 0:43:36.120 After five to thirty minutes, really not any significant observed changes. 0:43:36.680 --> 0:43:39.359 Like we said, probably if you could be that chicken leg, 0:43:39.400 --> 0:43:41.680 it would not be pleasant. But just looking at it, 0:43:41.960 --> 0:43:45.839 nothing strange seems to have occurred, but again, overnight, some 0:43:45.960 --> 0:43:49.200 really crazy stuff starts to happen. Unlike the other two 0:43:49.239 --> 0:43:53.680 acid solutions, which darkened and took on the red red pigment, uh, 0:43:53.719 --> 0:43:57.040 this acid solution remains clear, and the part of the 0:43:57.120 --> 0:44:00.400 chicken legs submerged in the acid has sort of partially 0:44:00.520 --> 0:44:06.080 disappeared and has a white discoloration along the sheared away surface. 0:44:06.120 --> 0:44:07.799 It looked to me, I don't know what you thought 0:44:07.800 --> 0:44:11.359 about this. It looked to me like frost or freezer burn. Yeah, yeah, 0:44:11.400 --> 0:44:13.399 I did have that kind of appearance. Yeah. And then 0:44:13.440 --> 0:44:16.759 also the entire rest of the leg has become discolored, 0:44:16.840 --> 0:44:19.279 so all of the red pigment and the muscle it 0:44:19.320 --> 0:44:22.560 looks like it's just been drained away. And even the 0:44:22.600 --> 0:44:25.520 part way up out of the acid has become pale 0:44:25.600 --> 0:44:29.879 white with greenish spots. It's lost its pink pigment. Uh. 0:44:29.920 --> 0:44:32.439 And then after they dropped the whole thing and when 0:44:32.440 --> 0:44:36.520 they cut the string, it looks almost like extremely overcooked 0:44:36.560 --> 0:44:40.319 boiled chicken, pale white all over except for a little 0:44:40.360 --> 0:44:43.520 part sticking out which looks green and disease like they 0:44:43.600 --> 0:44:47.640 just the worst example of steamer tray lunch room chicken. 0:44:47.760 --> 0:44:50.759 Legs you can possibly imagine. Yeah, and so I do 0:44:50.840 --> 0:44:54.439 recommend the the video because the chemist who they talked 0:44:54.440 --> 0:44:57.600 to in the video has a theory about why this happens. 0:44:57.760 --> 0:44:59.920 And I'm not going to repeat his theory, but it's 0:45:00.000 --> 0:45:02.960 worth checking out. It's pretty interesting. He also has wonderful 0:45:03.120 --> 0:45:08.000 like frizzy white hair. He's just a fabulous example of 0:45:08.000 --> 0:45:10.680 of a British scientist. Yeah, all right, we're gonna take 0:45:10.680 --> 0:45:12.399 a quick break and when we come back, we will 0:45:12.400 --> 0:45:15.080 get into the realm of super acids and then we 0:45:15.160 --> 0:45:20.239 will reconverge with the Zeno morph. Hey, everybody, trips to 0:45:20.280 --> 0:45:23.000 the post office are never convenient, so why not get 0:45:23.040 --> 0:45:25.920 postage right from your desk with stamps dot Com. Stamps 0:45:25.920 --> 0:45:28.600 dot Com gives you special postage discounts you can't get 0:45:28.600 --> 0:45:32.120 it the post office, including first class, Priority Mail, Express, International, 0:45:32.200 --> 0:45:35.160 and more. You'll never pay full price for postage again. Yeah. 0:45:35.160 --> 0:45:37.560 So here's how stamps dot com works. 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Go to stamps 0:46:14.920 --> 0:46:16.839 dot com right now, before we do anything else, click 0:46:16.840 --> 0:46:18.560 on the microphone at the top of the homepage and 0:46:18.600 --> 0:46:21.880 type in stuff that stamps dot com inter stuff and 0:46:21.960 --> 0:46:29.520 start mailing things. Okay, here's a question. When does an 0:46:29.560 --> 0:46:33.239 acid become a super acid? We've talked about superheroes at 0:46:33.239 --> 0:46:35.839 the beginning of Batman is a Is he a hero 0:46:36.040 --> 0:46:38.840 or superhero? Well, he doesn't really have superpowers, but I 0:46:38.840 --> 0:46:40.680 guess he counts as a superhero. Oh yeah, he's got 0:46:40.719 --> 0:46:43.879 the costume, he's got the technology. So yeah, maybe if 0:46:43.920 --> 0:46:46.799 these other acids we just discussed dissolving chicken legs won't 0:46:46.800 --> 0:46:50.440 dissolve a Batman fast enough, you need a super acid 0:46:50.520 --> 0:46:52.759 to dissolve a superhero. It seems like the kind of 0:46:52.760 --> 0:46:55.800 thing is super villain would need to to look into exactly. 0:46:55.840 --> 0:46:58.719 So what is a super acid? Well, super acid is 0:46:58.760 --> 0:47:01.759 an acid that is as strong as or stronger than, 0:47:01.840 --> 0:47:06.759 one hundred percent pure sulfuric acid. Uh, And why would 0:47:06.840 --> 0:47:10.319 you ever have anything like this? What's the point of it? Well, 0:47:10.440 --> 0:47:14.000 acids are an incredibly important catalyst in the chemical industry, 0:47:14.040 --> 0:47:16.200 which is maybe why they're in you know, these industrial 0:47:16.200 --> 0:47:19.520 settings and big open vets, but they have they have 0:47:19.719 --> 0:47:23.080 a number of applications and potential applications in fuel cell 0:47:23.160 --> 0:47:27.000 technology and the chemical and petroleum industry. So, for instance, 0:47:27.280 --> 0:47:30.600 acids don't usually react with hydrocarbons you know, such as 0:47:30.680 --> 0:47:35.160 oil petroleum, but superacids do. Yeah, And so we figured 0:47:35.600 --> 0:47:38.839 it's worth looking up what's the strongest acid known to humankind? 0:47:39.280 --> 0:47:41.799 There is an answer to this question, right, It is 0:47:41.960 --> 0:47:46.359 fluoro antimonic acid or h s b F six. Then 0:47:46.480 --> 0:47:49.400 this is, as far as we know, the strongest super 0:47:49.440 --> 0:47:51.920 acid on earth. So what's the deal with it? So 0:47:51.920 --> 0:47:56.759 this is made by combining hydrofluoric acid with antimony pentafluoride. 0:47:57.280 --> 0:48:01.520 And this is gonna sound crazy, but it the resulting 0:48:01.760 --> 0:48:07.040 acid is billions of times stronger than sulfuric acid. Yeah, 0:48:07.080 --> 0:48:10.520 it's billions and billions of times or just many orders 0:48:10.560 --> 0:48:15.080 of magnitude stronger than sulfuric acid. That is crazy, obviously 0:48:15.640 --> 0:48:19.000 something we don't exactly know. Like, I couldn't find any 0:48:19.200 --> 0:48:24.000 videos that were clearly real of people dealing with this stuff. 0:48:24.320 --> 0:48:26.600 I couldn't find a lot of first person accounts of 0:48:26.640 --> 0:48:29.880 people dealing with it. There there's some some research materials 0:48:29.920 --> 0:48:32.880 about it, but they don't really get into, uh, into 0:48:32.920 --> 0:48:36.000 what exactly would happen by combining this with stuff. I 0:48:36.000 --> 0:48:39.399 imagine if you dipped a batman in it, some some 0:48:39.520 --> 0:48:42.360 stuff would go down. Yeah, I mean, we found numbers 0:48:42.360 --> 0:48:44.680 that were kind of all over the place, and there's 0:48:44.719 --> 0:48:47.320 no MSDS score for this. There's no s A f 0:48:47.440 --> 0:48:49.600 T data on this, so we can't we can't even 0:48:49.719 --> 0:48:52.440 like look at numbers that put it, uh, you know, 0:48:52.480 --> 0:48:55.920 to make a comparison between it and sulfuric acid. Right, 0:48:55.960 --> 0:48:59.080 But just based on on what we do know about it, 0:48:59.120 --> 0:49:01.600 I think it's safe to assume that this stuff is 0:49:01.680 --> 0:49:05.560 incredibly dangerous and dipping a Batman and it would have 0:49:05.640 --> 0:49:10.080 some some consequences. But but you might be wondering, you know, 0:49:10.080 --> 0:49:13.759 with some with an acid that's strong, something that that reactive, 0:49:14.640 --> 0:49:17.879 how would you even store it? Right? Because just the hydrogen, Uh, 0:49:18.200 --> 0:49:21.080 just with the HF you've got this problem where you 0:49:21.080 --> 0:49:25.440 you you're dissolving glass containers. Uh so what do you 0:49:25.560 --> 0:49:28.360 use to store this wasn't an interesting piece of information 0:49:28.400 --> 0:49:32.120 I found cited in several sources. You can actually store 0:49:32.120 --> 0:49:34.680 it with something you keep around the house. It's something 0:49:34.719 --> 0:49:37.360 with a solid bond that really doesn't want to let 0:49:37.440 --> 0:49:41.320 go and bond with other stuff. It's teflon ptf E, 0:49:41.480 --> 0:49:45.560 so polytetrafluora ethylene. It's a ptf E and that's just 0:49:45.760 --> 0:49:51.279 a fluorine carbon bond molecule. That's it's it's very monogamous. 0:49:51.320 --> 0:49:55.480 It just doesn't want to go bond with other stuff. Interesting, Okright, 0:49:55.520 --> 0:49:59.160 So if you are battling a lizard ninja that may 0:49:59.239 --> 0:50:02.840 or may not have of um super acid in its body, 0:50:02.960 --> 0:50:07.239 where teflon ninja costume to battle it? Exactly? That's what 0:50:07.320 --> 0:50:11.400 Batman uses, I bet sustain his encounters with vats of acid. 0:50:11.520 --> 0:50:14.920 Is a teflon batsuit. So this would be what mcbaine's 0:50:15.000 --> 0:50:17.400 underwear was made off in that that scene we were 0:50:17.400 --> 0:50:19.319 talking about from The Simpsons, because when the flood of 0:50:19.360 --> 0:50:24.400 acid and throws him through I think Millhouse's um trailer, 0:50:25.360 --> 0:50:27.720 the acid like quickly eats off all of his clothing 0:50:27.800 --> 0:50:30.440 except for his underwear. Yeah. Well, I'm sure that was 0:50:30.520 --> 0:50:36.000 done for network censorship reasons rather than than scientific accuracy reasons, 0:50:36.239 --> 0:50:39.440 but it could be. Could be uh teflon underwear protects 0:50:39.440 --> 0:50:41.320 you from the acid. Though I don't know if that 0:50:41.320 --> 0:50:44.600 would work with every acid. That's true. I just have 0:50:44.719 --> 0:50:47.120 to assume if it works for the strongest acid in 0:50:47.160 --> 0:50:50.520 the world, it's going to be generally pretty effective. Alright, So, Joe, 0:50:50.640 --> 0:50:53.440 at this point, we've we've talked about what Hollywood acids 0:50:53.480 --> 0:50:56.800 look like, we've talked about the real properties of acids, 0:50:56.960 --> 0:50:59.560 and we're already seeing how they don't really match up 0:51:00.120 --> 0:51:03.640 to our Batman dissolving needs. Doesn't mean they're not dangerous. 0:51:03.680 --> 0:51:06.279 Some of that are certainly incredibly dangerous, but they don't 0:51:06.320 --> 0:51:09.080 behave exactly like we we want them to to make 0:51:09.160 --> 0:51:19.440 Batman burn. Well, are there other things in our natural 0:51:19.520 --> 0:51:24.560 world that do behave like these fictionalized substances. Well, still 0:51:24.640 --> 0:51:27.240 probably not exactly. You're not going to get the green, bubbling, 0:51:27.400 --> 0:51:30.720 instant dissolving you kind of thing. But in many cases, 0:51:30.880 --> 0:51:33.359 I think if you want a chemical that burns through 0:51:33.480 --> 0:51:37.000 human flesh more like it does in the movies, what 0:51:37.160 --> 0:51:39.520 you want is not necessarily a strong acid, but a 0:51:39.560 --> 0:51:42.800 strong base on the opposite end of the pH scale, 0:51:43.520 --> 0:51:46.640 such as LIE, which would be usually sodium hydroxide in 0:51:46.760 --> 0:51:51.800 a O H or potassium hydroxide KOH. And so I 0:51:51.880 --> 0:51:54.919 wanna bring to your mind a scene from a movie 0:51:54.960 --> 0:51:58.600 you might or might not have seen. You've seen Fight Club, right, Oh, yes, 0:51:58.920 --> 0:52:01.839 you remember the scene in Fight Club where Brad Pitt 0:52:01.920 --> 0:52:04.479 and Edward Norton they're sitting around a table and they're 0:52:04.560 --> 0:52:07.480 making soap, because this is a plot point in the movie, 0:52:08.040 --> 0:52:10.120 and one of the ingredients in making soap, and this 0:52:10.280 --> 0:52:13.359 is true, is LIE. And in the scene, Brad Pitt 0:52:13.480 --> 0:52:16.040 he takes Edward Norton's hand and he kisses him on 0:52:16.120 --> 0:52:19.279 the hand and then he pours LIE across the wet 0:52:19.360 --> 0:52:23.240 spot where his lips were, and this causes a reaction 0:52:23.600 --> 0:52:26.200 that begins to burn Edward Norton's hand, and for the 0:52:26.239 --> 0:52:29.320 sake of, you know, kind of macho and somewhat grandiose 0:52:29.360 --> 0:52:32.719 sense of carpet d M. Brad Pitt convinces Edward Norton 0:52:32.800 --> 0:52:35.160 to just sit there and endure the pain the chemical 0:52:35.239 --> 0:52:38.200 burn instead of washing off the LIE, and he also 0:52:38.320 --> 0:52:41.440 tells him that washing it off with water would only 0:52:41.520 --> 0:52:44.759 make it worse, and eventually he uses vinegar to neutralize 0:52:44.800 --> 0:52:48.680 the acid. Now, you shouldn't take your chemical safety information 0:52:48.800 --> 0:52:51.520 from a podcast. We are not chemical safety experts, and 0:52:51.560 --> 0:52:54.120 you should always consult those real experts before dealing with 0:52:54.160 --> 0:52:57.080 strong acids or bases. But from everything I've read, brad 0:52:57.160 --> 0:53:00.640 Pitt's wisdom about the vinegar here is not exactly true. Uh. 0:53:01.160 --> 0:53:03.320 It is true that a strong base like LIE is 0:53:03.400 --> 0:53:06.200 activated in the presence of water, and that you can 0:53:06.400 --> 0:53:09.879 use acids to neutralize bases. But if you've got LIE 0:53:10.040 --> 0:53:13.080 on you, my non expert opinion is that your first 0:53:13.160 --> 0:53:15.520 priorities just get it off. You get it off your 0:53:15.560 --> 0:53:18.560 skin as fast as possible, rather than running around looking 0:53:18.600 --> 0:53:21.160 for a creative lemons to squeeze on and neutralize it. 0:53:21.680 --> 0:53:23.640 Washing it off with water would be one way, but 0:53:23.719 --> 0:53:26.520 you just want it off your skin as fast as possible. 0:53:27.760 --> 0:53:31.120 Also worth pointing out that commercial vinegar is mostly water. 0:53:31.360 --> 0:53:35.359 It's acetic acid, but it's highly diluted with water. But yes, 0:53:35.480 --> 0:53:39.040 in any case, this is an example of what strong 0:53:39.280 --> 0:53:41.640 bases can do to the skin, and in some ways 0:53:41.719 --> 0:53:44.319 the scene is kind of accurate. Like a strong base, 0:53:44.440 --> 0:53:46.279 like a lie in the presence of water on the skin, 0:53:46.440 --> 0:53:50.200 can definitely burn you. It can cause bad chemical burns, 0:53:50.880 --> 0:53:55.120 and can definitely truly dissolve human flesh under the right conditions. 0:53:55.600 --> 0:53:58.160 So this is one thing we also see the movie 0:53:58.400 --> 0:54:01.040 acid being used for. It's like the Afia hitman in 0:54:01.120 --> 0:54:03.680 the movie have some vat of acid in their basement 0:54:04.160 --> 0:54:06.640 and they wax somebody and they put him into the 0:54:06.719 --> 0:54:10.040 vat of acid and it dissolves them. But studies have 0:54:10.120 --> 0:54:12.840 actually shown that if you really want to dissolve a 0:54:12.920 --> 0:54:15.279 human body. We're not trying to give anybody pointers on 0:54:15.360 --> 0:54:17.840 how to commit murder, and this is evidence is just 0:54:17.960 --> 0:54:23.919 science presented by the Mafia Science Institute. Apparently the better 0:54:24.040 --> 0:54:26.160 way to do that would be with a strong base 0:54:26.360 --> 0:54:29.360 rather than a strong acid for for fully dissolving flesh. 0:54:29.760 --> 0:54:32.319 And one piece of evidence for this is something we've 0:54:32.320 --> 0:54:35.400 actually talked about on the podcast before and you remember 0:54:35.400 --> 0:54:37.920 the episode we did last October about the future of 0:54:38.080 --> 0:54:42.600 the dealing with human remains and green burials and stuff 0:54:42.640 --> 0:54:45.439 like that, and so the method, one method we talked 0:54:45.480 --> 0:54:48.040 about is known as alkaline hydrolysis, and this is a 0:54:48.120 --> 0:54:50.840 method of disposing of condevers. It's used by lots of 0:54:50.920 --> 0:54:54.359 medical facilities and there's increasing interest in using it as 0:54:54.400 --> 0:54:58.880 a cheaper and greener alternative to traditional burial incremation. And 0:54:59.000 --> 0:55:02.120 essentially it goes like us. You put the body into 0:55:02.200 --> 0:55:04.920 a pressurized chamber that contains a mixture of water and 0:55:05.120 --> 0:55:07.919 lie so here's your strong base, and then you heat 0:55:07.960 --> 0:55:10.680 the chamber to around a hundred and sixty degrease celsius 0:55:10.840 --> 0:55:13.759 or you know, over three degrees fahrenheit, and the body 0:55:13.880 --> 0:55:16.080 is liquefied in just a few hours and it can 0:55:16.080 --> 0:55:19.600 be washed down the drain and any remaining bone fragments 0:55:19.640 --> 0:55:21.960 that can be pulverized and dealt with however you want. 0:55:22.080 --> 0:55:24.920 But now, obviously the heat and the pressure here are 0:55:25.000 --> 0:55:26.960 playing a big role in what's going on. But the 0:55:27.000 --> 0:55:30.640 strong base is crucial. It's an m v P dissolver 0:55:31.200 --> 0:55:34.759 of organic materials such as a human body or or 0:55:34.800 --> 0:55:37.759 an animal carcass or a Batman. And so one of 0:55:37.840 --> 0:55:41.880 my suggestions is that maybe we should start replacing movie 0:55:41.960 --> 0:55:45.200 acids in our fiction with movie bases. I think part 0:55:45.239 --> 0:55:49.279 of the problem is that acid sounds cooler. Acid is 0:55:49.360 --> 0:55:52.440 more even though I think most people know that you 0:55:52.560 --> 0:55:55.759 have acids and bases. Uh, it's like the just the 0:55:55.840 --> 0:56:00.360 word itself acid, Yeah, instead of like base, you know, 0:56:00.600 --> 0:56:04.239 like which one which one is just like linguistically potent? Yeah, 0:56:04.560 --> 0:56:07.440 for for fictional purposes, which one sounds scarier? To be 0:56:07.560 --> 0:56:11.840 protonated or to be deprotonated? Yeah, And then of course acid. 0:56:11.960 --> 0:56:13.719 I mean we talk about, oh, well that person has 0:56:13.760 --> 0:56:16.800 a really you know, acidic attitude or something. You know, 0:56:16.840 --> 0:56:19.160 it's like it's we we Acid is just going to 0:56:19.280 --> 0:56:21.759 make your sentence that much stronger. It's gonna make your 0:56:21.840 --> 0:56:24.640 threat to the superhero that much stronger. Yeah, it's it's 0:56:24.760 --> 0:56:27.040 it has more resonance, despite the fact that it might 0:56:27.160 --> 0:56:30.680 not be as great a wonderful dissolver of organic material 0:56:30.840 --> 0:56:34.719 or something like lie. But yeah, I'm ready Robert for 0:56:34.840 --> 0:56:37.480 you to take us back to the Nostromo. All right, Well, 0:56:37.640 --> 0:56:40.200 you know the my motion detector is going off here. 0:56:42.280 --> 0:56:44.200 I think it's actually coming from inside the room at 0:56:44.239 --> 0:56:47.239 this point. So yeah, let's let's talk about the xenomore. Yeah, okay, 0:56:47.320 --> 0:56:49.480 so we mentioned this earlier in the episode. This is 0:56:49.600 --> 0:56:52.640 one fantastic example of movie acid. I think it's probably 0:56:52.719 --> 0:56:55.680 my favorite movie acid is the Aliens Blood right, Yeah. 0:56:55.719 --> 0:56:58.120 I mean it's so well utilized and uh and and 0:56:58.600 --> 0:57:01.000 feels like a real threat and helps to just position 0:57:01.120 --> 0:57:03.960 the creature. You know, we can barely touch it, we 0:57:04.040 --> 0:57:06.640 can barely wound it in. When we do wounding, it 0:57:06.800 --> 0:57:08.880 might kill us. Yeah. So we've described sort of what 0:57:09.040 --> 0:57:11.040 happens in the scene in the first scene where they 0:57:11.080 --> 0:57:13.080 use that. There there are many different ways the asset 0:57:13.080 --> 0:57:15.759 appears throughout all of the movies that have Aliens in them, 0:57:16.440 --> 0:57:19.960 but it typically always burns and dissolves things. It's it's 0:57:20.040 --> 0:57:21.480 you don't want to get it on you. It might 0:57:21.640 --> 0:57:24.840 kill you, might burn you. But is there anything we 0:57:24.920 --> 0:57:27.480 can relate this acid too in the real world? Could 0:57:27.480 --> 0:57:30.600 an organism really behave this way? And what might it's 0:57:30.800 --> 0:57:35.120 acid blood be? Ah? Well, this is a fantastic question. Um, 0:57:36.040 --> 0:57:38.120 But before I get into it, I do want to 0:57:38.200 --> 0:57:41.520 mention that, as a fun note, there is an older monster, 0:57:42.000 --> 0:57:46.120 perhaps the most famous monster in Western literature that also 0:57:46.200 --> 0:57:51.400 boasted corrosive blood, and that's Grindel. Oh wow, Yeah, it's 0:57:51.440 --> 0:57:54.400 been so long since I've read from Bayol. It's been song, Yes, 0:57:54.440 --> 0:57:57.200 since I've read Bao Wolf. I've certainly read things since 0:57:57.280 --> 0:57:59.560 then that have Grendel in them, but it's been so 0:57:59.640 --> 0:58:01.560 long I didn't I didn't even realize this. I had 0:58:01.600 --> 0:58:03.800 sort of rediscovered this in our research. This is crazy. 0:58:03.840 --> 0:58:05.680 So of course be a Wolf is a classic of 0:58:05.760 --> 0:58:09.320 Anglo Saxon literature Old English literature, where you know you've 0:58:09.320 --> 0:58:12.040 got this epic. The hero Beowolf goes into slay the 0:58:12.120 --> 0:58:15.479 monster that's been harassing this Uh. I don't know, would 0:58:15.480 --> 0:58:18.720 you even call it a town, this encampment of humans? Uh? 0:58:18.800 --> 0:58:21.000 And so what's the deal? So he goes into slay 0:58:21.080 --> 0:58:24.400 Grendel and he encounters some acid blood. Yeah, but basically 0:58:24.600 --> 0:58:26.920 like he ends up getting this special sword and then 0:58:26.960 --> 0:58:30.320 at the end he's earlier, He rips off Grindel's arm, 0:58:30.600 --> 0:58:33.400 wounds him, follows Grindel back to his layer, cuts his 0:58:33.480 --> 0:58:36.360 head off, and then the blood from the from the 0:58:37.040 --> 0:58:40.440 beheading it melts the blade. This is a translation, obviously, 0:58:40.760 --> 0:58:44.480 but the sword blade began then the blood having touched it, 0:58:44.760 --> 0:58:49.600 contracting and shriveling with battle icicles towards a wonderful marvel 0:58:49.800 --> 0:58:53.680 that had melted entirely. So it's my understanding that you 0:58:53.760 --> 0:58:56.240 could kind of interpret this as maybe as blood really 0:58:56.320 --> 0:58:58.840 hot and just melted it um, you know, as in 0:58:58.960 --> 0:59:02.440 a you know, a great fire, or that it's acidic, 0:59:02.520 --> 0:59:06.160 depending on your interpretation. Either way, that's that's quite uh 0:59:06.320 --> 0:59:09.600 an adaptation on the part of the Grindel organism. Oh man, 0:59:09.720 --> 0:59:13.640 I wonder if this is the oldest single version of 0:59:13.760 --> 0:59:18.320 the creature that spits toxic chemicals maybe, you know, I can't, 0:59:18.920 --> 0:59:23.200 I can't think of another mythic creature that has this fire. 0:59:23.480 --> 0:59:26.360 But yeah, there's certainly fire breathing, but as far as 0:59:26.640 --> 0:59:31.000 acids or something that is corrosive that is, you know, 0:59:31.160 --> 0:59:33.560 destroying the weapons that are used against it, I can't 0:59:33.560 --> 0:59:38.240 think of one offhand. Yeah. Crazy. Well, anyway, we we 0:59:38.240 --> 0:59:42.040 should return to our modern example though, So imagine Beowulf 0:59:42.120 --> 0:59:45.480 goes into slay a xenomorph. He'd have exactly the same problem, right, 0:59:45.560 --> 0:59:48.120 the xenomorph queens in there. She's been harassing the town. 0:59:48.200 --> 0:59:50.520 He takes in his special sword. He lops off its 0:59:50.640 --> 0:59:54.439 head and the sword melts. Right, Yes, the sword melts 0:59:54.480 --> 0:59:56.680 and you got the job done. But yeah, your your 0:59:56.760 --> 0:59:59.800 magical weapon is ruined. Yeah, maybe spraying him on the 1:00:00.000 --> 1:00:02.640 as in the process and killing him getting the last 1:00:02.720 --> 1:00:05.400 laugh after all. Oh yeah, well you know it's Beowulf. 1:00:05.520 --> 1:00:07.960 They probably dodge it. I always have this thing, I 1:00:07.960 --> 1:00:11.400 always since sympathize with Grendel. Uh yet to see an 1:00:11.400 --> 1:00:14.840 adaptation of the story where I'm like, oh, yeah, Beawolf 1:00:14.880 --> 1:00:16.360 is a good dude, I can get behind him. I 1:00:16.440 --> 1:00:20.200 always sympathize with the monster. Well, I mean, yeah, Grendel's 1:00:20.240 --> 1:00:23.600 the loner. Well, maybe one of the first places we 1:00:23.600 --> 1:00:26.840 should look to see what what the aliens blood might 1:00:26.920 --> 1:00:28.760 be would be to look behind the scenes in the 1:00:28.840 --> 1:00:30.800 movie and see, okay, so how do they create the 1:00:30.800 --> 1:00:33.080 special effect in the In the alien movies, you see 1:00:33.080 --> 1:00:35.920 the aliens spilled their blood like in the first movie. 1:00:36.360 --> 1:00:38.560 In Ridley Scott's film, you see it spill on the floor. 1:00:38.640 --> 1:00:41.040 It burns through the floor, and it just keeps burning 1:00:41.080 --> 1:00:44.760 through floors until finally it stops. What what was going 1:00:44.840 --> 1:00:48.320 on there? Well? I found some accounts online of the 1:00:48.880 --> 1:00:51.160 where this special effect came from, and supposedly It was 1:00:51.320 --> 1:00:56.480 created by the Alien special effects supervisor Brian Johnson, and 1:00:56.840 --> 1:01:01.720 the the acid effect was essentially a combination of some 1:01:01.960 --> 1:01:05.640 various chemicals and then that was applied to and this 1:01:05.800 --> 1:01:09.280 is pretty clever, styrofoam floors they just made. They made 1:01:09.320 --> 1:01:14.200 styrofoam ship hull. I don't know what styrofoam stuff that 1:01:14.280 --> 1:01:16.400 would be the floors of the ship, and then spray 1:01:16.440 --> 1:01:18.600 painted its silver to make it look like it was metal. 1:01:19.360 --> 1:01:22.520 What's the name of the company, the corporation while wit 1:01:22.640 --> 1:01:24.720 in Utani and maybe they're just super cheap and they're 1:01:24.800 --> 1:01:30.200 like styrofoam. That's great. I'm sure that's what it was. 1:01:30.320 --> 1:01:33.440 But in any sense, so what was it made of? Well, 1:01:33.800 --> 1:01:39.240 the blood they had was made of chloroform acid, tone, cyclohexylamine, 1:01:39.640 --> 1:01:43.440 and acetic acid, which is vinegar. Pretty much, acetic acid 1:01:43.560 --> 1:01:46.320 is deluded to create vinegar and then some other compounds. 1:01:46.880 --> 1:01:49.720 But I thought this is funny because so acetic acid, yes, 1:01:49.760 --> 1:01:52.600 of course, is an acid deluding deluded in in water 1:01:52.720 --> 1:01:55.800 to make vinegar with some other flavorings. Acetone is not 1:01:56.000 --> 1:01:59.920 an acid, that's neutral neutral pH of seven uh cycle 1:02:00.080 --> 1:02:03.320 hex Lamine is a base and then and then of course, 1:02:03.360 --> 1:02:06.120 the head of chloroform and stuff, and apparently it eats 1:02:06.200 --> 1:02:08.760 through styrofoam all right, but it probably wouldn't eat through 1:02:08.760 --> 1:02:12.040 a real spacecraft's hull. And one of the big reasons 1:02:12.080 --> 1:02:14.920 it eats through styrofoam is probably the presence of acetone. 1:02:14.920 --> 1:02:16.520 I don't know if you've ever seen videos of what 1:02:16.600 --> 1:02:19.880 happens when you pour acetone on a styrofoam wighead or 1:02:19.960 --> 1:02:22.320 something like that. I don't think I've seen those videos. 1:02:22.360 --> 1:02:24.160 If you ever want to make a head melt for 1:02:24.240 --> 1:02:26.320 a bunch of children, this is a fun party trick. 1:02:26.400 --> 1:02:28.520 I just don't don't get any of the Well I'll 1:02:28.560 --> 1:02:32.080 keep that in mind from my son's a fifth birthday. Yeah, So, like, 1:02:32.200 --> 1:02:34.160 here's the head of your enemy, and you just pour 1:02:34.280 --> 1:02:37.120 some acetone on that styrofoam head, it just, oh no, 1:02:37.560 --> 1:02:40.680 it melts. So it works great for a special effect, 1:02:40.760 --> 1:02:42.960 but probably would not work for a real organism that 1:02:43.040 --> 1:02:46.000 wanted to melt through metal and plastic and all all 1:02:46.040 --> 1:02:48.560 of the other stuff that probably makes up a ship. Yeah, 1:02:49.280 --> 1:02:51.680 and one is a good uh, it's a good verb 1:02:51.800 --> 1:02:54.280 to use here, because, of course that brings up the question, well, 1:02:54.280 --> 1:02:56.840 how does this occur? Is this a an evolved trade? 1:02:57.040 --> 1:03:00.280 Is this an engineered trait? But what is the origin 1:03:00.320 --> 1:03:03.240 of the xenomorph? Then? Uh? Depending on how these work. 1:03:03.800 --> 1:03:06.600 But I have I have a couple of proposals here 1:03:07.160 --> 1:03:08.880 as to what could be going on with the xenomor. 1:03:09.360 --> 1:03:13.640 So my my first more modest and explosive proposition is this. 1:03:14.440 --> 1:03:16.680 And I'm sure that this doesn't match up to everybody's 1:03:16.720 --> 1:03:20.400 the interpretation of the franchise or every entry of the franchise. 1:03:20.520 --> 1:03:22.480 But here's the thing. Okay, so we see the thing 1:03:22.640 --> 1:03:25.280 bleeding acid when it's hard, right, you shoot it, cut 1:03:25.360 --> 1:03:28.080 it whatever acid shoots out. And of course we also 1:03:28.120 --> 1:03:30.680 see it using the acid offensively occasions such as when 1:03:30.720 --> 1:03:35.000 that face hugger uh melts through the glass dome on 1:03:35.080 --> 1:03:37.040 the helmet. Oh yeah, I didn't have to cut itself 1:03:37.120 --> 1:03:40.200 to do, right, It somehow just utilized treated this. So 1:03:40.600 --> 1:03:43.000 what if this isn't the creatures blood at all, really 1:03:43.160 --> 1:03:46.560 not properly, but rather an acid stored throughout the body 1:03:46.680 --> 1:03:49.880 to react to physical harm. Uh, that in turn harms 1:03:49.880 --> 1:03:52.880 the attacker. That's interesting because it wouldn't have to be 1:03:52.960 --> 1:03:54.760 the blood, would it. I mean, you wouldn't be This 1:03:54.840 --> 1:03:58.800 wouldn't have to be the substance that's circulating molecular oxygen 1:03:58.880 --> 1:04:01.320 to the body tissues. Right, it wouldn't be serving other 1:04:01.440 --> 1:04:04.800 purposes in the body. It would be there expressly to 1:04:05.080 --> 1:04:09.320 rupture during physical harm, to uh to harm or destroy 1:04:09.440 --> 1:04:12.760 the attacker. And the thing is, we see something very similar, 1:04:12.800 --> 1:04:17.120 really identical in terrestrial termites and ants who also serve 1:04:17.160 --> 1:04:18.600 a queen. You know, they also, I mean that the 1:04:18.760 --> 1:04:23.440 termite had a huge influence on especially aliens. So um, 1:04:24.400 --> 1:04:28.320 So we call this a process, this practice autopsis, and 1:04:28.400 --> 1:04:30.560 this is the process by which a natural world organism 1:04:30.640 --> 1:04:34.200 destroys itself via the internal rupturing of an oregon or 1:04:34.280 --> 1:04:37.120 gland that in turn ruptures the skin. So it's a 1:04:37.200 --> 1:04:43.360 purely muscular exercise caused by deliberate contractions around the engorged tissue. Fascinating. Yeah, 1:04:43.400 --> 1:04:44.920 I mean it's crazy because this is the kind of 1:04:45.000 --> 1:04:48.600 thing that apparently evolved from pooping on your enemy. Like 1:04:49.000 --> 1:04:51.040 what started off as like poop on the enemy when 1:04:51.040 --> 1:04:54.480 they attacked and defensive defecation, but then it becomes like 1:04:54.720 --> 1:04:56.160 if you can't get that poop out of the aim 1:04:56.200 --> 1:04:59.520 as fast enough, just like make it rupture through your body, 1:05:00.000 --> 1:05:04.320 and that has steadily evolved over time into more complex 1:05:04.480 --> 1:05:09.720 modes of self rupturing, and the body buster par excellence 1:05:09.800 --> 1:05:14.560 here is neo Kapa Termes tarracula, and this is um. 1:05:15.000 --> 1:05:18.760 This is a fabulous organism. So the species workers grow 1:05:18.960 --> 1:05:23.640 abdominal sacks of toxic blue crystals throughout their lives. But 1:05:23.760 --> 1:05:27.360 these explosive backpacks, as some studies refer to them, are 1:05:27.360 --> 1:05:30.600 are most pronounced and elderly workers, so so as they 1:05:30.680 --> 1:05:33.280 become less useful to the colony, they sort of turn 1:05:33.400 --> 1:05:36.439 into the suicide bombers exactly like you know, you don't 1:05:36.440 --> 1:05:39.440 have you have dull and useless mandibles. You really know, 1:05:39.720 --> 1:05:42.360 not that much use, but you've become a stockpile for 1:05:42.560 --> 1:05:46.920 toxic substances, and that becomes your purpose. When enemies invade 1:05:47.760 --> 1:05:51.120 the termite mound. Uh, the the ind they just rushed forward. 1:05:51.120 --> 1:05:54.439 The invaders then bite into their bodies, and that's when 1:05:54.480 --> 1:05:58.720 the blue crystals combine with salivary secretions to produce a 1:05:58.800 --> 1:06:04.240 deadly chemical weapon. Huh. So that would mean that the 1:06:04.560 --> 1:06:08.080 xenomorph here would simply boast a system of pressurized acid tubes, 1:06:08.160 --> 1:06:10.600 and it's it is merely the rupture of those tubes 1:06:10.680 --> 1:06:12.800 that we see uh and it and is therefore an 1:06:12.840 --> 1:06:16.640 act of autos So this would be like highly concentrated 1:06:16.720 --> 1:06:19.800 stomach acid or something else that has evolved into this 1:06:19.920 --> 1:06:22.320 defensive mode. Yeah, and of course we do see from 1:06:22.400 --> 1:06:24.840 our own stomach. So like we talked about earlier, that 1:06:24.920 --> 1:06:28.160 it's possible for a body to contain within it some uh, 1:06:28.360 --> 1:06:31.720 some concentration of acid that would be very damaging if 1:06:31.760 --> 1:06:34.240 we encountered it externally or in the wrong part of 1:06:34.280 --> 1:06:38.680 the body. You just need specialized cells along whatever you know, 1:06:39.080 --> 1:06:42.640 body tissues containing it to to buffer it essentially, to 1:06:42.760 --> 1:06:45.120 keep it, uh from reacting with the rest of the 1:06:45.160 --> 1:06:49.080 body exactly. Now, of course, all of this is taking 1:06:49.120 --> 1:06:51.640 a very terrestrial approach to it. It's taking a very 1:06:52.000 --> 1:06:55.800 carbon biased, water biased approach. But of course, not all 1:06:56.480 --> 1:07:00.680 modes of life, not all biochemistry is out there, are 1:07:00.800 --> 1:07:04.600 necessarily based on carbon or based on water. So we 1:07:04.680 --> 1:07:06.439 might have to take it a bit further. What sort 1:07:06.480 --> 1:07:10.120 of organism might have blood that is either incidentally or 1:07:10.200 --> 1:07:15.240 adaptively corrosive at least to our sort of flesh. Well, 1:07:16.160 --> 1:07:19.600 perhaps they're silicon based life forms as opposed to carbon based. 1:07:20.120 --> 1:07:22.640 So even here on Earth we have solicit acid, which 1:07:22.680 --> 1:07:26.720 is very weak acid, and our hair, our nails, or epidermists. Uh. 1:07:27.040 --> 1:07:33.680 So it seems conceivable that this, or perhaps hexafluoro silsilic acid, 1:07:33.880 --> 1:07:39.320 might play into a silicone based xenomorph's anatomy. And this 1:07:39.440 --> 1:07:41.720 is the exact sort of biochemistry that could enable a 1:07:41.800 --> 1:07:45.120 life form to thrive in a sulfuric acid rich environment. 1:07:45.640 --> 1:07:48.240 Now I'm not sure it could be as potent as 1:07:48.320 --> 1:07:49.920 what we see in the films, but this is an 1:07:49.960 --> 1:07:52.440 area where I think, you know, there any biochemists listening 1:07:52.480 --> 1:07:54.400 off to weigh in on that for us? Yeah? Well, 1:07:54.400 --> 1:07:58.640 I mean, how how reactive would an acid or whatever 1:07:58.680 --> 1:08:01.200 the chemical is, Maybe it's a wrong base actually that 1:08:01.320 --> 1:08:03.600 it's releasing. How strong would it have to be to 1:08:03.720 --> 1:08:06.400 really eat through the hull that fast? Is there any 1:08:06.480 --> 1:08:09.120 chemical that would really eat through the hull that fast? 1:08:09.240 --> 1:08:11.520 I don't know about that. Maybe what if it has 1:08:11.560 --> 1:08:15.040 the fluoro antimonic acid in it? Yeah, And you know, 1:08:15.120 --> 1:08:17.200 the thing is for a defense. You know, if you're 1:08:17.200 --> 1:08:20.200 if you're thinking about something that has evolved, this as 1:08:20.240 --> 1:08:23.120 a basic defense against human ooid creatures that are very 1:08:23.479 --> 1:08:26.000 or at least semi human like. All you would need 1:08:26.000 --> 1:08:28.439 you wouldn't need a very strong acid or base at 1:08:28.439 --> 1:08:30.519 all to just like get in their eyes and give 1:08:30.560 --> 1:08:33.040 you a moment's advantage in some sort of an altercation. 1:08:33.800 --> 1:08:37.560 But it seems as if it's an organism perfectly conceived 1:08:37.880 --> 1:08:42.719 to be unkillable on a spaceship for plot purposes. Indeed, 1:08:42.880 --> 1:08:46.040 it is a perfect organism. Now, some experts, including the 1:08:46.520 --> 1:08:50.840 late Great Carl Sake and have speculated that alternate astrobiologies 1:08:50.920 --> 1:08:54.719 could still entail carbon but depend on something other than water. 1:08:54.960 --> 1:09:00.439 Is the solvent such as ammonia or perhaps hydrofluoric acid. Yeah, 1:09:00.600 --> 1:09:02.599 and of course this is crazy because we we mentioned 1:09:02.640 --> 1:09:06.880 the face hugger burning through the presumably glass helmet, and 1:09:07.240 --> 1:09:09.280 uh and what does hydrofluoric acid do? But it can 1:09:09.320 --> 1:09:11.960 break down glass, as we mentioned. Yeah, of course, now 1:09:12.040 --> 1:09:14.599 it does take a while. Again, one of the things 1:09:14.680 --> 1:09:18.320 that's always not quite matching upright between the movie acid 1:09:18.400 --> 1:09:20.840 and the acid in the in the real experiments we're 1:09:20.840 --> 1:09:23.439 talking about is just rapidity. It's just the time it 1:09:23.560 --> 1:09:26.400 takes to dissolve things. Right. Everything is instant in the films, 1:09:26.400 --> 1:09:28.120 and it just it doesn't seem to be that way 1:09:28.200 --> 1:09:30.479 with real chemistry. So here's a quote from Sagan in 1:09:30.600 --> 1:09:35.320 Nine Cosmos his book. Perhaps elsewhere some solvent other than 1:09:35.360 --> 1:09:38.680 the water is used, hydrofluoric acid might serve rather well, 1:09:39.200 --> 1:09:41.200 although there is not a great deal of fluorine in 1:09:41.240 --> 1:09:44.720 the cosmos. Hydrofluoric acid would do a great deal of 1:09:44.840 --> 1:09:47.439 damage to the kind of molecules that make us up, 1:09:47.920 --> 1:09:52.599 but other organic molecules paraffin waxes, for example, are perfectly 1:09:52.680 --> 1:09:55.840 stable in its presence. I like hear Carl Sagan voice. 1:09:55.920 --> 1:09:59.160 It's it's it's not that great of a voice. We 1:09:59.200 --> 1:10:01.439 really what we need as we need Chuck to come 1:10:01.479 --> 1:10:04.120 in and do his kermit the frog voice, which I 1:10:04.240 --> 1:10:07.000 think also sounds very sagany. I don't think I've ever 1:10:07.080 --> 1:10:08.760 heard that. Oh you should, you should ask him to 1:10:08.800 --> 1:10:11.320 do a little kermit. But read some Cosmos. I think 1:10:11.360 --> 1:10:14.120 your Carl Sagan is pretty good man. Don't don't put 1:10:14.160 --> 1:10:16.920 yourself down, all right? Well, you know, well Sagan is 1:10:16.960 --> 1:10:18.880 not the only one to chime in on this. Uh. 1:10:19.120 --> 1:10:22.320 Plenty of other biochemists have also looked at, you know, 1:10:22.600 --> 1:10:28.120 possible alternate biochemistries, and they've presented sulfuric acid as a possibility. 1:10:28.520 --> 1:10:32.000 So it's certainly more cosmically common. You know, so it 1:10:32.200 --> 1:10:34.880 would it would make sense. In the two thousand seven 1:10:34.960 --> 1:10:38.880 book The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems, and 1:10:38.960 --> 1:10:42.559 this is a book by a number of authors, it's 1:10:42.720 --> 1:10:45.759 it's It's credited authors are the Committee on the Limits 1:10:45.800 --> 1:10:50.439 of Organic Life and Planetary Systems UM, the National Research Council, 1:10:50.479 --> 1:10:51.960 and a few other bodies. I'm not going to list 1:10:52.040 --> 1:10:56.920 them all, but in a chapter titled Hawai Water Toward 1:10:57.080 --> 1:11:01.400 more Exotic Habitats, they state the fall quote, sulfuric acid 1:11:01.479 --> 1:11:05.679 is a reasonably good solvent that supports chemical reactivity. Sulfuric 1:11:05.720 --> 1:11:09.639 acid is known to exist above Venus, where three cloud 1:11:09.720 --> 1:11:14.160 layers at KOs are composed mostly of aerosols of sulfuric 1:11:14.200 --> 1:11:17.880 acid about in the upper layer and then in the 1:11:17.960 --> 1:11:23.440 lower layer. The temperature about kelvin at about fifty KOs 1:11:23.479 --> 1:11:27.000 altitude at about one point five a t m is 1:11:27.040 --> 1:11:31.439 consistent with stable carbon to carbon covalent bonds. So the 1:11:31.520 --> 1:11:34.960 tacomb here is that, yes, it is conceivable that we 1:11:35.040 --> 1:11:39.120 would have a a a carbon based life form in 1:11:39.240 --> 1:11:44.080 which the solvent is sulfuric acid. It's reasonable now whether 1:11:44.200 --> 1:11:48.920 that life could actually match up to the just profound 1:11:49.120 --> 1:11:54.200 the standards that we set with the xenomorph. That's another issue. Yeah, 1:11:54.720 --> 1:11:56.479 are you are you breaking my heart? Robert? Are you 1:11:56.600 --> 1:11:59.040 telling me that there's probably not a xenomorph anywhere in 1:11:59.080 --> 1:12:04.200 our solar system. I'm saying that the xenomorph exists in 1:12:04.280 --> 1:12:08.200 the realm of forms. Yeah, and and but the universe 1:12:08.400 --> 1:12:10.679 that we live in, it's it may be at least 1:12:10.720 --> 1:12:13.320 willing to meet us halfway. Well, even a pale imitation 1:12:13.400 --> 1:12:16.360 of xenomorph would be welcome to my ears. Yes, so 1:12:16.520 --> 1:12:19.280 in my eyes as it burned them out. So if 1:12:19.320 --> 1:12:21.240 you yeah, if you lived to be um, you know, 1:12:21.439 --> 1:12:25.200 several thousand years old, your your life prolonged by all 1:12:25.280 --> 1:12:28.759 the various technologies available to you, and you set yourself 1:12:28.880 --> 1:12:32.000 on the perfect death. You want to die via the 1:12:32.280 --> 1:12:36.720 acidic blood of of of an alien species. There is 1:12:36.880 --> 1:12:40.040 maybe some hope. So, Robert, I've enjoyed exploring this with 1:12:40.160 --> 1:12:43.679 you because I've always loved movie Acid, and I wonder 1:12:43.800 --> 1:12:46.280 what it is that captivates us so much about Acid. 1:12:46.320 --> 1:12:48.080 I want to go back to that question I started with, 1:12:48.280 --> 1:12:50.200 why you know they so they put Batman in the 1:12:50.240 --> 1:12:53.840 bank vault. Oh no, it's boiling acid. It could have 1:12:53.960 --> 1:12:57.200 been boiling water or even room temperature water and it 1:12:57.320 --> 1:13:00.120 still would have killed him. But that wouldn't be nearly 1:13:00.240 --> 1:13:03.560 is interesting For some reason, we want acid. Why is 1:13:03.640 --> 1:13:06.040 acid so interesting? Is a way to kill people when 1:13:06.080 --> 1:13:07.960 you could get the same thing done with just a 1:13:08.160 --> 1:13:11.559 hot uh normal liquid. You know, it could be hot 1:13:12.439 --> 1:13:14.840 uh bleach. I mean, well, you know that would be 1:13:15.000 --> 1:13:17.040 that would be a pretty weird interesting way to kill people. 1:13:17.080 --> 1:13:20.599 But hot water, boiling water that people would be like, huh, 1:13:21.000 --> 1:13:23.320 why why didn't you go to acid? Well, because well, 1:13:23.400 --> 1:13:25.599 for one thing, boiling water is every day, right, yeah, 1:13:25.800 --> 1:13:27.960 or if not every day, it's like even like most 1:13:28.000 --> 1:13:30.360 people have some experience of putting the macaroni in the 1:13:30.400 --> 1:13:32.720 boiling water. Yeah, yeah, And I think that's right. I 1:13:32.800 --> 1:13:37.439 think heating. Heating is a method of changing the chemical 1:13:37.560 --> 1:13:40.000 nature of something that's very familiar to us. Whereas the 1:13:40.080 --> 1:13:43.240 chemical reactions that take place in the bond breaking that 1:13:43.360 --> 1:13:46.040 takes place when you've got an acid solution of water, 1:13:46.800 --> 1:13:49.160 that that's something that's less familiar to us. We don't 1:13:49.200 --> 1:13:52.360 understand what's going on there. And for that reason, it's 1:13:52.439 --> 1:13:55.759 kind of like magic. Yeah, it's to the the average viewer, 1:13:56.040 --> 1:13:59.800 like a bad guy dissolving an acid makes as much 1:14:00.000 --> 1:14:03.760 scientific sense as one ron silver touching on another ron 1:14:03.880 --> 1:14:06.920 silver in time cop and then becoming a big red 1:14:07.040 --> 1:14:11.599 goog of melt. But yeah, that's why they're both wonderful. 1:14:11.680 --> 1:14:14.880 That they capture the magic of nonsense exactly. They put 1:14:14.960 --> 1:14:18.559 it right into your face or on the face. Hey, 1:14:18.680 --> 1:14:22.240 so there you have it, Hollywood acid. 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