You can order it here, $20 for 16 oz.
http://secure.sciencecompany.com/Acetic-Acid-Glacial-16oz-P16220C672.aspx
wow… this will go great with my Ebay opium poppies
and by “go great,” I mean have complementing flavor
because i’m combining two foods
get it? ok :o
Gallium? But I don’t think many other Dopers have a small jar of Gallium around.
Honey (depends on the variety).
The real reason it’s hard to find glacial acetic acid in stores is actually due to how retailing has changed over the years. Over time, Wal-Mart et al have really changed how retail operations work. Everything is loosely modeled on manufacturing and keeping stock supplies just ahead of consumer demand (think “on demand” manufacturing). To maintain profitability, stock has to turn over very rapidly. As a result, there’s no room for stocking such slow moving product.
Well, in a way they might. If you have one of those mercury free thermometers that has a silvery liquid inside it, that’s “galinstan”, an alloy of gallium, indium and tin. However, that alloy freezes at about -2 F.
The boyfriend runs a photography store - they’ve got plenty of it.
It’s really only slow moving at lower temperatures. Heat it up to 40 degrees Celsius and it flows pretty much like water.
No-one has posted the greatest of all melty products - chocolate. By the time the temperature approaches 100 F (as it did here last week - I think we’re in for a long, hot summer Down Under) chocolate is probably soft enough to be considered a liquid.
One problem with chocolate (and also many oils) is that they don’t really have a single well-defined melting point. With water, if it’s less than 0 Celsius, it’s completely, unambiguously a solid, and if it’s more, it’s completely, unambiguously a liquid, but with chocolate, there’s a broad range where it goes from “solid” to “soft and messy solid” to “squishy” to “sludgy”, and so on.
I used to have a big jar of that.
We used it as a summer detector.
When the oil was solid, it was not summer.
When the oil turned liquid, it was summertime.
Included in the mixtures/compounds of fats I mentioned in post #9. The propensity of chocolate to melt is derived largely from the fats it contains.
When I worked in a chemical plant, my machine shop was in a shared warehouse between a sodium hypochlorite manufacturing area and an ammonia tank filling area. :rolleyes:
I can get into a gas mask in 10 seconds, I can get into a self contained breathing apparatus in 30. There is a reason I spent 7 years with hair an inch long … rubber pulling out hair sucks.
Not really. The typical house will have a dozen thermoplastics that meet your criteria, one sugar and maybe two or three waxes or fats.
So it’s mostly artificial polymers.
Good one. Another cooking oil that will get nearly solid in the fridge is sesame oil - and it’s recommended that you refrigerate it because it can go rancid relatively quickly at room temp.
On the topic of coconut oil, it’s solid at room temp, but you can get a version called fractionated coconut oil that IIRC is liquid at room temp - not entirely sure what happens if you put it in the fridge, but I assume it may well solidify like other oils.
Jello also qualifies, but you will lose water as you heat it so it wont return to it’s original phase. Thermoplastics have similar issues since the plasticizers can phase separate. I also can’t think of a household thermoplastic that one could reliably melt without burning. I’ve gotten them to loosen beyond the glass transition, but not really melt to a liquid. Butter also will not return to it’s original form.
I think the best answers so far are shortening and wax, but a more satisfying answer would be one that formed a crystalline solid with a sharp melting point. Honey might count, but it takes a long time to crystallize. Anybody know anything about dried honey? Fructose melts at 103˚C, but I doubt many people have pure fructose lying around the kitchen.
Actually, you can buy it at many natural food coops.
It’s a little more hygroscopic than regular sucrose, so it gets lumpy. It makes nice crystals though, unlike honey which is a nearly equal mix of fructose and glucose, with other junk mixed in.
That are liquid in the range specified by the OP in post #8? What are they?
Yes, that’s a good point, and one I hadn’t considered. No actual melting point, more a sort of melting range. 