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I really like oxalic acid. You can dissolve it in water and drop a rusty locked-up pair of pliers into the mixture, and the next day it will be all freed up and moving. It leaves a weird yellow gunk behind, though. It's got to be scrubbed off with steel wool. You can leave the pliers in there for a long time. I wonce left a pliers in there for ten weeks, and there was only minor pitting. I don't know if the pitting is because of the oxalic acid or because of the chlorine in the tap water. And also you can drink it if you wnat to die like a dog.
Do dogs frequently die from drinking oxalic acid, or was it more a figure of speech?
I'm not a scientist, but it's my understanding that when when you pour ethylene glycol antifreeze into a doggy bowl and let a doggy drink it, the doggie one way or another metabolizes it into oxalic acid and then dies like a dog, from kidney failure.
I'd personally hurt someone if I knew they did that.
I think it mostly happens on accident. Most people aren't scientists and so don't know that anti-freeze tastes good or what it does to little critters who like to lick it up, and so folks leave it sitting around and they create situations where it can be easily licked up. Every jug of anti-freeze made after 1980 has a novel printed on the back explaining about how you shouldn't let the nice critters lick up the anti-freeze, but no-one born after 1980 knows how to read a novel anymore.
This is also similar to the cause of one of the first heavily-documented medication-related disasters in the US, which led to the current FDA regulatory process. In 1935, the antibiotic sulfanilamide was discovered. It isn't very soluble in most things, so was typically manufactured as tablets. In 1937, S.E. Massangill's chief pharmacist and chemist announced raspberry-flavored elixir sulfanilamide, a syrup form of the antibiotic. It went through no testing for safety or efficacy.
The diethylene glycol (DEG) used to dissolve the sulfanilamide caused at least 100 people to have a far worse time than your happy bucket creature, on account of sudden, acute kidney failure due to the DEG being metabolized into oxalic acid.
I do agree with you that it's a cool chemical though (outside of the toxicity). Personally, I'd say that my favorite crystal might be iron pyrite. It can be used to spark a fire (like flint) and is showing some possible use as a semiconductor for photovoltaics. More than that, though, it forms two rather distinct and neat crystal shapes: cubes and pyritohedra (natural dodecahedra). And it's nice and shiny, while having fairly low monetary value.
I won't be gaslit into thinking anti-freeze tastes good. I'm fact checking this time. With my tongue.
What if a doggie did it? Would you abuse an animal?
They'd have a lot of explaining to do.
Even if they had to do it to find out what happens and to make sure nobody else does it again?
Yes, no one escapes consequences.
yeah, that's cool and all, but I was hoping for something more like...
if you walk around with this crystal in your front pocket, it will act as a ward against evil and also make you rich and even more beautiful than you already are.
Can oxalic acid be weaponized and used as a defensive tool, like pocket sand?
Yeah, probably. Inhaling it doesn't feel too good.