A good drop of Malt?

[T i m]

Hi All,

So, for cleaning / removing calcium, is there any difference (apart from the smell / cost) between malt and white vinegar please?

All the best ..

T i m

[brugnospamsia]

What you want is "non-brewed condiment" that has more acetic acid in it than straight forward "gone off wine" like yer high class balsamics etc ... I buy gallon cans of non-brewed pickling vinegar to use in the loo - I won't use anything else.

As to whether either will shift "calcium", I'd guess you mean calcium salt deposits - the _metal_ calcium will shift in a fairly dramatic way simply when added to water - releasing explosive hydrogen as it does ...a classic gee wizz science demo - I believe Adam Hart-Davis did it on telly recently ...

I'm trying to remember the name of the cleaning product advertised on TV at the moment that claims to shift calcium ....

[Markus Splenius]

I've never done it with Calcium, but I would say Potassium would be better!

M.

[T i m]

Hmm, I saw 'pickling vinegar' in the supermarket but it was over twice the price of the Malt so I left it. I think Mum may be able to get me some of the stuff you mention by from one of the bigger 'sheds' by the gallon.

I do ;-)

- the _metal_ calcium will shift in a fairly dramatic way simply

Not that new 'Cillit bang' ? (I wonder who thought that name up?)

All the best ..

T i m

[mike ring]

Markus Splenius wrote in news: [e-mail]:

the _metal_ calcium will shift in a fairly dramatic

We useta do it with sodium;

mike

[Markus Splenius]

Is that how a stutterer says it? Should the first word have only one syllable? :-))))

[Christopher Key]

Always wanted to see it done with Caesium. Our chemistry teacher mentioned a video showing the reactions resulting going from Lithium to Caesium, but I've never managed to find a copy.

Chris Key

[Markus Splenius]

Yes I saw that video! :-)

The caesium was introduced using a long pole! And the reaction was violent indeed.

You won't get caesium for home use unless of course Grunff knows different. A nice alternative is to introduce a teaspoon of water into a flaming chip pan.

DO NOT DO THIS INDOORS! BETTER STILL, DO NOT DO IT AT ALL! I RECOMMEND A MINIMUM 10 METRES AWAY FROM THE BODY AS THIS CREATES A FIREBALL OF BURNING FAT.

M.

[dmc]

Yeah, It's Cillit Bang that goes on about Calcium.

"Limescale is calcium that sticks" errrrr....yes.....

Darren

[Peter Ramm]

Have a look at

Caesium is a bit tame

[Peter Ramm]

Have a look at

Caesium is a bit tame - sodium not bad !!

[Steve Firth]

What's impressive is that the reaction is just as violent all the way down to 116K (i.e. caesium reacts with ice as violently as with water).

The movie used to be available for free on the net at

but the entire site has disappeared. Possibly some issues over copyright? Or maybe it was safety :-)

[john]

Try Waitrose toilet cleaner. Claims to be dilute hydrochloric acid.

[john]

Should have clarified: "Toilet descaler" rather than "cleaner". Certainly cleans up lime on shower trays.

[Morten]

Nahhh, just go down to B&Q, TP or whoever you fancy and get some Brick Acid, that's 30% HCl, that will take the lime scale very quickly indeed...

/Morten

[Christopher Key]

Thanks for that, I enjoyed those!!!

Chris Key

[Andrew Gabriel]

Yes, I was allowed to drop a sizable lump of sodium into medium conc hydrochloric acid when I was at school. The text books all said not to do this. The condition was that I designed a remote control system to the chemistry teacher's satisfaction which did this in the middle of the football pitch whilst we controlled and watched this from the science block. An electromagnet drop mechanism was designed to release a lump of sodium. The acid was poured into a large tin (had to work fast before it dissolved through that) which in turn sat in a large washing up bowl with water in it. Dropped the sodium in. At first there was some fizzing and the odd spark coming out. After perhaps 10 seconds, it turned into a roman candle sending a continuous shower of sparks about 3' into the air. After perhaps another 10 or 20 seconds, it exploded with a flame shooting some 20-30' into the air.

Afterwards, there was no acid left in the tin and it was bobbing on the surface of the water, so the explosion presumably blew it all out. We dosed the area in sodium hydrogen carbonate to neutralise any acid left.

Analysing it all afterwards, we decided the following sequence of events happened... Initially, the lump of sodium was floating on the surface and the area in contact was reacting with the acid. Some of the surface of the sodium may have still been protected by the oil it is stored in, although we had wiped off as much as we could. After the first 10 seconds, the sodium melted, probably pooling out over the HCl surface making much better contact and reacting more vigerously. The explosion happened when the sodium vapourised, probably mixing with the HCl vapour/spray allowing for extremely rapid reaction, and the blast emptied the tin of HCl.

I bet school kids don't get the opportunity to learn anything like this nowadays. This encompassed designing some remote control, performing an experiment which even the teachers didn't know what was going to happen, and then sitting down afterwards and analysing the results, trying to come up with a plausable explanation to fit the observations.

[nog]

Toilet paper might not sting quite so much. ;-)