Cymric wrote:
Karlos wrote:
Having seen first hand the effects of a coca-cola concentrate spillage at the docks of my home town as a child, I have not felt inclined to drink coca cola in any way shape or form.
What happened?
(And while I'm at it, is that rotated black \tau on the right of your hand a fracture? What did you do?)
Myself and several other kids from my junior school saw this unfold one saturday morning when basically playing not so far away.
A fairly large shipment of concentrate (later announced to be coca cola concentrate) was dropped in a crane accident, rupturing several large drums of the stuff.
The concentrate, which is basically neat phosphoric acid (which is very different to the same stuff dissolved in water) and all the other stuff except sugar and carbonated water eroded away 6 inches of reinforced concrete in an extremely exothermic reaction that, like neat sulphuric acid, is not best dealt with by applying water. Which is exactly what several dock workers attempted before the professionals got there. Several of them were hit by the backsplash getting burned, both thermally and chemically. I found out later that one was permanently blinded.
An entire hazmat team had to come in to clean the spill and the whole area was evacuated. The extent of the damage was evident the following week when the badly corroded steel rods that reinforced the concrete were visible for all to see in the 5 metre wide sunken depression the stuff had made.
Seeing that when your'e seven years old really made you wonder what the stuff does to your insides.
And yes, that was my broken wrist (specifically the scaphoid) before it was realigned and cast. Look in the scaphoid fractures thread to see how I skilfully managed that.
