If acid can melt/dissolve anything, why is it always in a bottle or in someort of glass?

Question

I really dont know where i should put this question, so i will put it here.

Answer 1

There are many kinds of acids around, and their strengths can vary from almost water-like to very strons acids that can only be kept in platic containers simnce they eat way at anything else.

Acids do not dissolve everything. Example, vinegar is an acid. You can hold vinegar in your hand. Your hand stay intact.

Furthermore, strong acids are usually stored in dark-brown glass containers because:

1. Acids are sensitive to light.
2. The glass itself is acid-resistant.

Answer 2

Because acid CAN'T dissolve everything.

That is a popular riddle question though. Someone comes up to you and offers you a liquid that can dissolve anything. You know it's fake otherwise the bottle would be dissolved.

And acid doesn't melt, really. It is a highly reactive chemical that wants to react with just about everything it touches. So it changes the chemical properties of itself and whatever it touched. That's how acid works. And though some acids are impressively strong (like sulfuric acid), that doesn't mean it will want to react with every other chemical out there. Sulfuric acid (H2SO4) can burn through a lot of materials (especially organic) but you can contain it in a glass bottle. Try to avoid touching strong acids... as well as strong bases.

Hope I helped. :)

Answer 3

The term acid has a very specific meaning if you're talking to a chemist. The average person however thinks of acid as dangerous corrosive material that melts everything it touches. These are the images that shown in movies and television.

I chemistry however, an acid has a couple of definitions. For simplifications, an acid is a material that has a free proton to react with a basic material.

There are dangerous acids and harmless ones, depending upon their concentration. Fruit juice has citric acid, which does not burn your throat or stomach, but it will make your eyes sting.

Acids can be both liquid and solid. For example hydrochloric acid is usually sold as liquid and at even relatively low concentrations can be very dangerous to your skin and in particular your eyes.

Another acid that is commonly found in powder form is oxalic acid. If you touch it with your skin, it won't burn you, but if you eat it can be very toxic.

Other acids are commonly found in household products. Just read the label on your shampoo, laundry detergent, and even some of your food packages. If I remember correctly, stearic acid is commonly found in shampoo.

Another way to look at this, is, if I tell you I have a tree in my front yard, do you automatically think of a palm tree? How about a giant seqoia, or maybe just a simple oak tree.

The same is true with acids.

Answer 4

No 1 acid can dissolve everything but overall there isn't something that 1 or more types of acids that can dissolve something, for example Aqua regia, nitrosyl chloride, NOCl, is the only acid that can dissolve gold but it cant dissolve nickel, where as glass can be dissolved by hydrofluoric acid and it is commonly used for etching glass, and so it must be stored in teflon or polyethylene containers which are about the only non metallic item that it cant dissolve.

Answer 5

Glass in which acid is stored is made up Borosilicate (or Borosil glass) which is resistent to acid.

Hands On Experience - Try putting a drop of dil. HCl on you finger. Does it dissolve? At the most skin gets dehydrated and you get a yellow stain :)


Moral of the story: Different acids have different strength
Ranging from citric acid (lemon) which we can drink to HF (Hydrogen flouride; mixture of HCl and HNO3 Ratio 3:1) which can dissolve even gold!

Answer 6

Not all acids dissolve everything. The only common acid which dissolves SiO2 (glass) is HF. And HF is VERY nasty stuff. It comes in a plastic bottle usually, because it can't dissolve plastic.

Answer 7

The only acid able to attack glass is HF, which does not mean tha it "dissolves" glass. Therefore it is usually stored in plastic containers (or steel, for that, when it is pure, in its gas state, and not dissolved in water). The strongest acid is not H2SO4, for instance: it reacts strongly with water, so that it is very caustic on living tissues. Much stronger is HCl: in one definition of acid/base, the "strenght" of an acid is the index of its dissociation in X- and H+.

Answer 8

A more philosophical question: if a universal solvent were discovered, how would you store it? (Possible answer anyway: heat it to the plasma state, store it in a _magnetic_ bottle, and cool it to liquid temperature when you need to use it.)

BTW, as someone has already said, HF dissolves glass, so it used to come in _wax_ bottles! It comes in plastic bottles nowadays.

Answer 9

Not all acids are store in glass container. Most acids can be but HF will actually attack glass. So the materal of the containers are designed to be most inert to the sustain they are holding.

Answer 10

acid does not dissolve anything... it doesn't even dissolve everything. Some acids will however dissolve glass!!