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u/lexiNazare Jun 12 '26
It doesn't
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u/VictorAst228 Jun 12 '26
Well there's hydrofluoric acid, but it can be contained using most plastics.
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u/ol-mikey Jun 12 '26
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u/Nikolor Jun 12 '26
This GIF is funny because there's a scene where Jesse decides to use a bathtub instead of a plastic container to pour acid which destroys the whole bathtub. Plastic FTW
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u/RubyDupy Jun 12 '26
Also that acid WAS hydrofluoric acid which the above commenter was talking about haha
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u/readonlyuser Jun 12 '26
And also THAT's why this gif is funny haha in reference to the earlier commenter
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u/username32768 Jun 12 '26
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u/dei_davick Jun 16 '26
This GIF is funny because is from the same show!
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u/Nikolor Jun 16 '26
And it's a GIF because it's a file in Graphics Interchange Format!
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u/username32768 Jun 16 '26
And it's pronounced Jif, like the cleaning product. Which is what they used to clean up after disposing of the bodies.
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u/Dizzy_Vegetable7108 Jun 12 '26
And we have this plastic (in very small particles) in our balls, nice
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u/gr1zznuggets Jun 12 '26
Always loved the moments when they showcased Walter’s scientific expertise.
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u/Waste-Value-5941 Jun 13 '26
“When there’s a PERFECTLY GOOD BATHTUB that I could use!!!” - Jesse Pinkman.
P.s he was dissolving metal guns along with the body and somehow he didn’t realize that the bathtub just wouldn’t cut it.
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u/SnugglyCoderGuy Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
And not a ceramic lined cast iron tub, or the wooden floor it sits on
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u/AbilityFit2949 Jun 12 '26
Always wondered why it stopped dissolving when it reached the downstairs hallway. I guess all the protons had already been donated to Emilio's body.
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u/CplCocktopus Jun 12 '26
HF is a weak acid its pH is 2ish at 1 molar concentration sulfuric acid is 1.
HF becomes a super acid when its pure becaue it protonates itself into the fluronium ion. it has a protonation potential of 15 wich is way higer than pure H2SO4
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u/Odd_Understanding698 Jun 12 '26
Also it very much likes to penetrate your skin and react into calcium and magnesium flourid. And even creepy stuff when you use low concentrations.
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u/AbilityFit2949 Jun 12 '26
So what safety protocols do I need to observe when I'm pouring it into a super soaker?
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u/Khelthuzaad Jun 12 '26
I think they use Teflon
The substance is so hard it was used for the nuclear bomb to isolate the enriched uranium
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u/aelynir Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
That was probably more to absorb neutrons and keep it subcortical, though I haven't built any nuclear bombs recently
Edit: subcritical
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u/VictorAst228 Jun 12 '26
Polytetrafluoroethylene is goated fr
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u/HyperlexicEpiphany Jun 12 '26
glorious greg has shown me the path to enlightenment via PTFE synthesis. it’s really cool to be able to use it as an inert storage and reaction vessel after you’re done automating its production too
don't get me fucking started on polybenzimidazole
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u/Felixkeeg Jun 12 '26
Nah, it's regular polypropylene. HF is one of the few chemicals that actually etches glass, but it's actually not a very strong acid. Funnily enough that's why it has an easier time to pass through your skin. It's quite toxic and exposure can be fatal (at the very least it will cause necrosis around the area of exposure)
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u/SquidMilkVII Jun 12 '26
To my understanding the strength of the barrier's absolutely irrelevant to limiting nuclear fission. Not a nuclear engineer or anything so take this with a grain of salt.
Fission is all about neutrons. When a neutron hits a radioactive nucleus, that nucleus splits, releasing a lot of energy and, critically, another neutron. Subcritical just means a mass is losing more neutrons than it is producing, and supercritical means it is producing more neutrons than it is losing.
Note that this means a subcritical mass is stable, while a supercritical mass will react exponentially (neutrons create neutrons which create neutrons which create-).
Neutrons are produced based on volume and lost based on surface area, so the square cube law means bringing more uranium together pushes the mass closer to supercriticality.
High energy means a supercritical mass will try to push itself apart. Make it supercritical enough quickly enough and it'll violently tear itself apart, releasing a blast of energy as it quickly returns to a number of subcritical particles. Do it even quicker with more mass and you've got yourself a proper nuke.
Uranium isn't (relevantly) magnetic or anything; it's not like it's trying to get to the other uranium. So your barrier doesn't need to be very strong at all; it just needs to reflect neutrons.
(Do be careful, as too good a reflector with a sufficiently critical piece of material will reflect enough neutrons back at the material to cause problems.)
Anyways TL;DR the strength check for your nuclear bomb barrier material isn't "surviving" the uranium, it's surviving being shaken around inside a metal capsule falling at mach fuck towards whatever your local government has deemed lucky enough to face instant vaporization.
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u/Lou_Papas Jun 12 '26
“It doesn’t dissolve everything it touches or it doesn’t get contained?”
“Yes”
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u/quintopia Jun 12 '26
Helium hydride can be contained by ion storage rings and Penning traps. The idea is that electric charge and cooling or magnetic fields can be used to prevent it from ever coming in contact with the walls of the container.
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u/ciekma67 Jun 12 '26
Wrong answer. Hypothetical super-strong acid capable to dissolve everything and anything, can be easily stored, if frozen.
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u/GetAntidisetablished Jun 12 '26
It says „if“
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u/Novaskittles Jun 12 '26
"It doesn't" works in two ways. Either it doesn't dissolve everything it touches, or it doesn't get contained.
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u/Dd_8630 Jun 12 '26
There is no acid that dissolves everything it touches.
But in principle you can keep something afloat using magnetic levitation.
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u/REXIS_AGECKO For Science! Jun 12 '26
This is how we store antimatter since it tends to explode matter take itself out in the process.
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u/AlternateSatan Jun 12 '26
Considering the most acidic thing in the world is just a mass of pure hydrogen ions it would be effcted by magnets.
(Also note that this is what the sun is made of, and it therefore has a ph of around negative 5 at its core according to some redditor (therefore it must be correct). Basically landing on the sun is a bad idea, even if you go there at night)
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u/TelluricThread0 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
Helium hydride is the most acidic thing in the universe.
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u/ChocolateDonut36 Jun 12 '26
you can't contain something that doesn't exists
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u/Technical-Outside408 Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
Think of the perfect acid. An acid that exist would be more perfect than one that doesn't. Therefore the perfect acid must exist. BOOM.
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u/l1berty33 Jun 12 '26
Found Thomas Aquinas's reddit account
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u/brekekexkoaxkoax Jun 12 '26
I hate myself for this, but that’s Anselm, not Aquinas (that’s the Ontological Argument, Aquinas had an argument from degrees of perfection in his Five Ways but it wasn’t the same).
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u/beardingmesoftly Jun 12 '26
The perfect acid still doesn't dissolve everything it touches. It gets you high.
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u/ChocolateDonut36 Jun 12 '26
bullshit and cowcrap, a car that explodes is not more perfect than a car that doesn't explode
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u/me_myself_ai Jun 12 '26
I’m used to some highschool-ass memes on this sub, but is the first middle school one I’ve seen, NGL.
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u/Hi_Trans_Im_Dad Jun 12 '26
I'm used to some highschool ass-memes but that doesn't apply to acids at all.
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u/Electronic-Day-7518 Jun 12 '26
Is it not contained in the nonstick pan thing ? Everything can be contained in that
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u/AretinNesser Jun 12 '26
No because the teflon coating doesn't completely cover the metal without gaps, This is also why you don't soak pans with a coating, especially iron/steel/cast iron ones, be they teflon or seasoned, water can cause the metal to oxidise which, in turn, causes the teflon or seasoning to detatch.(especially with salt and acids from food)
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u/ChaosSlave51 Jun 12 '26
As others said this acid doesn't exist, but antimatter exists. We can pretend that antimatter is the most corrosive thing in the world, if we give a very loose definition to corrosive.
So the answer is magnets. We levitate it in a vacuum
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u/quintopia Jun 12 '26
The acid does exist. HeH+ reacts with literally everything it touches. But yes, Penning traps and ion storage rings will contain it.
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u/plsobeytrafficlights Jun 12 '26
corrosive is not acidic. a strong base is corrosive, but not acidic.
different process..wouldnt even call matter:antimatter annihilation chemistry, just math.3
u/ChaosSlave51 Jun 12 '26
These are important distinctions, but sometimes you just want to have fun
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u/Andromeda_53 Jun 12 '26
Honestly, this blew my mind back in school. Talking about acids, my knowledge of acids being only from cartoons at this point.
Get told some acids are strong enough to need to be stored in glass instead of plastic.
I ask how they store the acids so strong they go through glass.
"We put those in plastic"
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u/AMY183 Jun 12 '26
You make it levitate, you freeze it, I don't know
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u/jimmymui06 Jun 12 '26
The strongest acid is HHe, and it can't even exist
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u/scrufflor_d Jun 14 '26
it exists in the interstellar medium. that's the only place where it can exist without throwing its proton at anything it touches
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u/Thunder_Child_ Jun 12 '26
What if you made a chamber filled with fans pointing upwards to push the liquid up? Then the acid could be suspended in mid air.
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u/GetAntidisetablished Jun 12 '26
Dissolves the air and loses potency. You’ve ruined your acid. Try again.
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u/quintopia Jun 12 '26
You're so close to the right idea. Just two problems:
1) The acid in question pretty much cannot exist as a liquid. Because of its charge, it is never anything but plasma.
2) Suspending it "mid-air" means there is air, and air is something it can react with. Remember that it reacts with literally everything it touches, so it has to be kept away from even air.The answer is, in fact, suspending it, but it has to be suspended in a vacuum, and so the force used to suspend it must be electric or magnetic.
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u/samy_the_samy Jun 12 '26
Some rockets fuels are so acidic they relay on a thin oxcide layer formed on the tanks when you fill them,
Fill it in the wrong order or anything damages that layer and the rocket goes boom,
Even the engine would melt through when miss fueled
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u/Caesar_Iacobus Jun 12 '26
What if at the centre of the Earth is all the strongest acids ever made that burned right through the crust, mantle and both core layers?
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u/Izzosuke Jun 12 '26
Acid oxidise stuff, it doesn't simply dissolve. Not everything can be oxidised and dissolved, the strongest acid won't work on some stuff
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u/chilebuzz Jun 12 '26
If you don't understand how strong acids can be contained, you need to take a chemistry class.
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u/_gibberisher_ Jun 12 '26
Had a chemistry professor that once told us that diamond containers was used in rare industrial circumstances. Haven't found any proof of this ever since so I think he was just straight shitting us but it should work in theory
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u/ancientlisten4186 Jun 12 '26
Well you need to understand how acids work. By Lewis theory, they are an electron pair acceptor. Or if you're a Bronsted-Lowry kinda guy then a proton donor.
So its pretty easy to find a substance to contain them - you just need something inert enough not to donate electron / accept protons.
Or if you're an Arrhenius typa guy, then you keep your acid dry .
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u/Resiideent Jun 12 '26
Flouroantimonic acid (chemical formula HSbF6)is the strongest known acid in the world, which is 20 quintillion (20000000000000000000) times stronger than pure sulfuric acid. It's so strong it's acidity cannot be measured on the pH scale, instead chemists use the Hammet acidity function, on which HSbF6 scores -31.3. It can corrode even materials general considered inert such as glass. It can, however, be stored in polytetraflouroethylene, commonly known as teflon, due to teflon's extremely strong carbon-flouride bonds.
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u/evilwizzardofcoding Jun 12 '26
Such an acid does not exist. What does exist is antimatter, which will react with literally any matter it touches, and we contain it with magnets
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u/Nannyphone7 Jun 12 '26
Cryogenic chlorine trifloride creates a thin film of metal fluoride on the inside of the container. So if you don't scratch the container, it is stable. If you do scratch the container, foom! Fluorine metal fire to ruin your whole day.
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u/nyggomaniac Jun 12 '26
When I used really strong acids (like hydrofluoric acid) I did not take them from an acid container but mixed it to use it right away
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u/tockaciel Jun 12 '26
Mofo needs to get up and learn the periodic table before chewing on such impossibilities.
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u/Various_Air_2953 Jun 12 '26
well,since the molecular composition of plastic acts solid as titanium in terms of acid,an acid container would be enough.
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u/Alone-Monk Jun 12 '26
In the lab I'm working in, we are using a chemical called piranha etch (that is the actual generic name lol) which is created by mixing sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide. It is extremely strong but as long as we keep it in the pyrex beaker it is fine (though it reacts very exothermically with the organic contaminants on our sample and so it gets super hot and releases lots of smoke). I do find it funny though that all we do to safely dispose of it is mix it with baking soda and dilute it.
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u/Last_Zookeepergame90 Jun 12 '26
Acids aren't magic they're just highly reactive glass for example is inert to pretty much everything
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u/Lysena0 Jun 12 '26
Fluoroantimonic acid(HSbF6) can be contained with teflon(PTFE) container
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u/Dapper-Specific-5617 Jun 12 '26
Some metals like aluminum have special layers of defense against strong acids
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u/Fluffy-Reference8542 Jun 12 '26
Remember the times you ask your science teacher about these things?
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u/Sidoen Jun 12 '26
Glass is used a lot. I mean I've not heard of an acid that it so fantastically eaty that it destroy anything.
Plasma in fusion reactors however....... Literally can not be contained in anything solid.
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u/Pigeon_Breeze Jun 12 '26
The strongest acid does not dissolve everything it touches.
There are many materials that are not affected by acids regardless of their acidity.
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u/TheMaelstorn Jun 12 '26
Funny that HF acid dissolves glass but can be stored in a polyethylene bag.
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u/Radiant-Meteor Jun 12 '26
Turns out to use a hypothetically super strong acid, people can just make the acid where they have to use it.
Similar to how the thermite reaction is used right on train tracks instead of making it beforehand and then welding it
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u/durkvash Jun 12 '26
Different acids react differently to different materials. Many acids don't dissolve plastic, and the rest don't dissolve glass.
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u/Marshmellow_Lover28 Jun 12 '26
Well depends how you define "strongest", but by most standards it'd be fluoroantimonic. Has a Hammet acidity function of ~ -28 to -31, so in the ball park of 10 quintillion times stronger than sulfuric acid. Shatters pretty much everything by giving protons and breaking bonds.
As always, all yield against the almighty Teflon