There are lubricants that make it lose its stickiness, solvents that dissolve gum, but is there any chemical that actually breaks it apart?
chicle, that is
Enzymes in spit?
Hot chocolate seems to melt it and make it break down to an unchewable consistency, even after cooling.
gums are long polymer chains not dissimilar to natural rubber (of which chicle is a form). Most chewing gums nowdays are petroleum based polymers, and very resistant to chemical or enzymatic degradation. Freezing makes it brittle and they can be melted, but once in the ground your gum will be around for hundreds of years.
I think any chocolate. I remember once popping some gum right after eating a chocolate and it turned into some disgusting stringy soft mess.
It’s the fat and oil in other foods that make the gum bad. It just keeps it from adhering to it’s self, it doesn’t dissolve it.
Let’s not give up so easily. The question was, “Is there any chemical that breaks it apart?” I’d bet aqua regia, pirhana solution or a chromic acid solution would take care of it; though it might not go quickly. Of course if the plan is to get it out of your hair and leave the hair intact these approaches are not recommended.
Yes! The question is one of chemistry, not home cleaning tips.
The gum in question is not in my hair or on the ground, but is hypothetical, sitting in a petri dish in a hypothetical highschool chemistry lab.
Looking those up, I find:
“Aqua regia (Latin for “king’s water”) is a highly corrosive, fuming yellow or red solution. The mixture is formed by freshly mixing concentrated nitric acid and concentrated hydrochloric acid, usually in a volumetric ratio of one to three respectively. It is one of the few reagents that dissolves gold and platinum.”
“pirhana solution” a fish puree?
“Chromic acid refers to a collection of compounds generated by the acidification of solutions containing chromate and dichromate anions or the dissolving chromium trioxide in sulfuric acid”
Since Christopher seems uncertain, can anyone else with access to those chemicals verify the supposition?
The reason I am uncertain, is that certain portions of gum (the gum base ) are made up of petroleum polymers that even those solutions would have difficulty attacking. There just isn’t anything in polyisobutylene for these reagents to attack. The terminal groups in these polymers might be vulnerable, then the reagents could slowly chew their way down the polymer chain but this would take a very long time.
The trouble is that polymers like polyisobutylene are composed of mainly carbon-carbon single bonds and carbon-hydrogen bonds. Activating these bonds is very difficult and actually a long term goal of many research programs. I mean if we could take polyethylene and shorten it down to 8 carbon lengths we could essentially turn plastic into gasoline.
Since the only goal is to destroy the polymer maybe a different approach is usefull. These bonds are more susceptible to radical processes than ox-redox reactions. In the presence of light Bromine will react with C-H bonds to form C-Br bonds. With the right solvent you could probably get the polymer to swell just enough to let the bromine in. This doesn’t break the polymer, but it will make the polymer susceptible to acid/oxidants so following this with the previous solutions should do it.
On the other hand, if we have absolutely NO limits as to what chemicals we can use, then a canister of fluorine and blast shield would make quick work of it.
I wouldn’t recommend anybody try any of these solutions. Some of these mixtures can be very unpredictable.
Pirhana solution is a mixture of concentrated aqueous hydrogen peroxide and concentrated sulfuic acid. Don’t get any on ya!
Rock beats gum.
Gum beats hair.
Hair covers rock.
What kind of nasty corrosive enzymes are in your spit?
We better dust off and nuke this one from Orbit.