Flesh-Eating Hydrofluoric Acid - Periodic Table of Videos
You can support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/periodicvideos We dunk chicken drumsticks in dreaded Hydrofluoric Acid, along with Hydrochloric Acid ...
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[Dr. Poliakoff] Most chemists are fascinated by what they've always been told, that HF, hydrofluoric acid, eats human flesh. We thought that we should try it. Now, obviously, we can't try human flesh, and Brady decided that a chicken's leg, that's an uncooked leg from a dead chicken, is a reasonable approximation to a finger. We decided that we should try and do a demonstration, but with some controls so we could compare them. And what we wanted to know was, what was special about HF? Was it the acid, or was it the fluorine? So we thought if we took two other acids, HCl, hydrogen chloride, and sulfuric acid, both of those have the H, the acid part, but they don't have the fluorine. I have been told that HF attacked your nerves so quickly that if you stuck your finge...
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[Dr. Poliakoff] Most chemists are fascinated by what they've always been told, that HF, hydrofluoric acid, eats human flesh. We thought that we should try it. Now, obviously, we can't try human flesh, and Brady decided that a chicken's leg, that's an uncooked leg from a dead chicken, is a reasonable approximation to a finger. We decided that we should try and do a demonstration, but with some controls so we could compare them. And what we wanted to know was, what was special about HF? Was it the acid, or was it the fluorine? So we thought if we took two other acids, HCl, hydrogen chloride, and sulfuric acid, both of those have the H, the acid part, but they don't have the fluorine. I have been told that HF attacked your nerves so quickly that if you stuck your finge...
