The Amazing Hot Heart Massager is a gel-filled, heart shaped pack used to give massages. There is a small metal disk floating in the gel, when you bend the disk, it snaps and the gel around the disk quickly heats up, turns to a crystalised material, and the heat quickly spreads through out the whole gel pack.
It stays hot for about an hour, then gets kind of hard. To reset it, you drop the pack into a pot of boiling water for 10 minutes. I'm sure there's some sort of scientific explanation of it, I hope someone knows what I'm talking about and can tell me how it works.
2006-12-26 13:22:03 · 0 answers · asked by zimani08 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Chemistry
I love this process. The liquid in the bag is most likely sodium acetate (added to salt 'n vinegar potato chips to give them their tang -mmmm) as a super saturated solution. Most solids dissolved in water will increase their concentration as you raise the temperature of the water (think iced tea and hot tea). Some few substances will dissolve much more at a higher temperature than at room temperature and then not crystallize as you cool them down. Sodium acetate is such a chemical, sodium thiocyanate is one also, but is more toxic than sodium acetate. The function of the button in the bag was a puzzler to me until I looked up the patent. The button has a slit cut in it so that when you flex it you drive a stream of liquid up into the bulk of the solution upseting it and leading to the crystallization of the material. Just like you have to add heat to the crystallized supersaturated solution to get it to go back into solurion, the reverse,. coming out of solution gives heat back. Kind of like a heat battery. Neat stuff. Try putting "supersaturated sodium acetate" on a search engine.
2006-12-26 18:09:53 · answer #1 · answered by kentucky 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Sounds like a supersaturated solution of sodium thiosulfate. 30 years ago, we got a solution of sodium sulfate, sodium sulfide (phew!), and sodium thiosulfate from a ore refining process. A couple of months after I put the liquid in a bottle, I accidentially dropped it on the floor. Well, even back then they had plastic bottles, fortunately. But the cap was knocked off and a little of it spilled onto the floor. When I picked it up, the stuff on the floor had already hardened into a solid and the rest in the bottle was crystallizing and it got so hot it steamed. Sound familiar? Most (but not all) materials, when they crystallize give off heat. Some materials (and sodium thiosulfate is well known) supersaturate which means the solution is in an "unstable" state and a little disturbance can kick it off. Read Vonnegut's Cats Cradle.
Just read Xavier's post- he sounds like he knows what he's talking about.
2006-12-26 13:40:54 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
The product I am familiar with contains a super saturated solution of food grade sodium acetate. The super saturated part means that it will crystallize completely with the proper stimulus.
Since the crystal form of Sodium Acetate contains less energy than the solution, heat is generated.
The disk inside is a magnesium alloy that when flexed starts the crystallization process. You can cause crystallization by other methods. Try smacking the bag sharply (when it is as room temperature) or running a voltage across it.
2006-12-26 13:28:17 · answer #3 · answered by xaviar_onasis 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Pure Romance Heart Massager
2016-09-28 07:14:08 · answer #4 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I just came from Ralphs and they did a demonstration, but I did not buy because I wanted to research first. Now I forgot the name but the product sounds identical to what your talking about. What is the website?
2014-09-09 12:35:40 · answer #5 · answered by misterholguin 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
sodium acetate is what i have seen, as in the first post.
2006-12-26 15:38:57 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋