Bah, leftovers in dirty dishwater keep spinning aimlessly in the sink, even though you’ve already pulled the stopper off. Even worse, after flushing the toilet, the water rises to its edge, almost overflowing. Help, clogged drain! And you don’t have any unblocking agent at home. What now? Didn’t Grandma even mention that Coca-Cola is such a powerful substance that it can unclog a drain?
You can unclog the sink with an acidic liquid
says Daniel Boone, head of the Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute for Physics at the University of Amsterdam and an expert in the field of complex fluids.
Cola contains carbon dioxide and phosphoric acid and is therefore quite an acidic drink. The story goes that the acids in cola dissolve and dissolve the grease and grime in your drain, just like a real drain cleaner. Seems very reasonable, right?
The cola is not acidic enough to unclog
Despite the Coca-Cola Company’s secret recipe, we know that cola averages an acidity of 2.5. “It’s quite acidic, but not acidic enough to dissolve blockages,” says Boone. “The pH scale is logarithmic, which means the acid concentration in drain cleaner is about 100 times that of cola.” Expensive sodas don’t come close to being unscrewed, so you save yourself the hassle of emptying the bottle down the toilet.
“By the way, the pH of cola is comparable to that of your stomach—it’s also very acidic, on average between 1.2 and 3,” adds Boone. It’s probably not surprising, but the contents of your stomach aren’t an effective drain cleaner. Indeed: “Experience shows that this clogs the drain rather than unblocks it…”
After that tasty libation, a cup of cola may help quell the nausea.
Nobody flushes the toilet with cola. Is this really clean with a yellow cloth? And: Test here if you are cleaning your home properly.
