Dissolve a Soda Can with Chemistry



You can’t see it, but there’s a polymer coating inside your aluminum can. 🥫

In this episode of Science Experiments & Demonstrations, @chemteacherphil uses chemistry to prove it! Working with lye, which is highly caustic and requires proper safety equipment (so please don’t try this one at home), he makes a solution that reacts with the aluminum, converting it into a compound that dissolves in water. When the aluminum is gone, you can see the polymer coating! These coatings are useful because without them, acidic drinks could slowly corrode the aluminum underneath.

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33 Comments

  1. I recycle my cans, and last time I was there to do so I mentioned how the inside is actually plastic on most cans.

    They looked at me insane and like smirkingly said ‘no dude it’s not’ three different guys.

    Yes dude, they are.

  2. all cans which contain food have a polymer coating, that is why I always scream when "survival" channels heat their canned food in the can over an open flame

  3. I think the greatest problem is not that can but the people that buy bottled water. Unless you have bad water from your tap there is no reason to destroy the environment for your microplastic filled water. Most water in those bottles is just tape water filtered and then they often add back minerals.

  4. There are microplastics in the Amazon rivers, and in the global rainwater

    ^ for all the martyrs in the comments who have never drank Diet Coke apparently

    Companies have already screwed the pooch on this one…. what we need now is a safe filtration technology or something

  5. Diffusion happens with fully plastic soda cans that is interesting… Gas and pressure basically leaks into plastic and outside. Slowly but measurably.

    Aluminum prevents that.

    ….then you go into semipermeable membranes…osmosis…molecular sieves and potassium pumps and then you remember those for three years and kinda forget it and parrot those words around in your head….

    As no true understanding is born of it… unless you truly think about it still would have to have electron microscopes at least good optic microscope… And stuff and devices to manufacture different sieves and chemicals and magnetic materials and magnets and magnetizing machines.. oscilloscope..

    Some of them can be basically build from scrap but can't afford rent so who cares.. goldfish attention span is… Shiny.

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