Better living through chemistry

[maradydd]

Whatever that stuff was that had carbonised onto my stove burners, it was no match for concentrated sodium hydroxide and a putty knife.

Comments

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

If I knew how to handle that properly, I'd try it on some stuff in my kitchen. The doom, it is of.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Proper handling of sodium hydroxide involves safety goggles, gloves (ones that come up over your forearms are ideal), and a long-sleeved heavy shirt and jeans you don't mind ruining. (Ideally you won't spill it, but accidents happen.)

In my case, I took the burner rings off (it's a gas stove), filled a plastic tub with cold water, poured in some lye, then slipped the burner rings in and let them sit for six hours. You want cold water because sodium hydroxide is exothermic when it goes into solution; also, just like how you always add acid to water and not the other way around, bases go into water and not the other way around.

Have a source of cold running water handy in case you spill some of the lye water on yourself. You may also want to have some dilute acetic acid (kitchen vinegar is fine) on hand in case it doesn't rinse off quickly enough -- it'll neutralize the NaOH into water and sodium acetate.

Strangely, sodium hydroxide doesn't eat my skin the way it does some people's -- it dries it out pretty badly, but I don't get burns from a random splash. I don't recommend determining this by experience. Even if this applies to you, if you have cracked cuticles or a cut on your hand it will sting like hell if it comes in contact with the solution. Also, I'm very serious about the safety goggles; even fairly dilute NaOH is enough to blind you.

Safety goggles.

[praecorloth.livejournal.com]

They work.



As does science.

Re: Safety goggles.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Very fetching!

[buruna-enu.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this educational entry!

Professor Meredith is totally badass. You do teach as a profession if I recall, yes? (Have you actually taught at schools?)

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

I taught (well, TAed, which meant lecturing and grading based on an actual professor's syllabus) for five years at the University of Iowa, in linguistics and then in computer science. I enjoyed it and would teach again, though once I finish my PhD I'm more inclined to be a perma-postdoc than to get into the tenure rat race.

[neoliminal.livejournal.com]

Whatever that stuff was that had carbonised onto my stove burners, it was no match for concentrated sodium hydroxide and a putty knife.

Few things are, dear, few things are.

[buruna-enu.livejournal.com]

I kind of miss cleaning baking trays with paint scrapers, but I've gotten to femme about my kitchen environ to allow such things to go on under my roof.

Still.

Badass method.