Yanking the Chain Award
July
2003
One of the most
enduring and popular legends is the one that prescribes numerous alternative
uses for Coca-Cola, presumably effective because of the soda's high acid
content. Chain-Breaker Jennifer decided to put these claims to the test
for a class project. I don't know what grade she got, but she earns
the July Yanker!
Subject: Coke -
Tried It. Thought It'd Work. It Didn't.
By Chain-Breaker
Jennifer
In response to this BreakTheChain.org
article.
Here are the
specifics:
In many states, the highway patrol carries two gallons
of Coke in the truck to remove blood from the highway after a car
accident.
Consider this:
if an accident is brutal enough to cause the road to become flooded with blood,
you’d need a lot more than 2 milk jugs’ worth of ANY liquid to rinse it away
properly. And if it’s really as nail-dissolving as they’d have us believe,
then it’s a terrible ecological threat to the roadside flora and fauna. We
should complain to the authorities.
You can put a T-bone steak
in a bowl of coke and it will be gone in two
days.
Tried it.
Thought it’d be cool. Didn’t work.
Steak was
well-marinated though. Should’ve used it with that "Moist ham" recipe in
number 7 down there, ‘cause that stuff’s
good.
To clean a toilet:
Pour a can of Coca-Cola into the toilet bowl and let the "real thing" sit for
one hour, then flush clean. The citric acid in Coke removes stains from vitreous
china.
Tried it.
Thought it’d be cool. Didn’t work.
To remove rust spots from
chrome car bumpers: Rub the bumper with a crumpled-up piece of Reynolds Wrap
aluminum foil dipped in Coca-Cola.
Tried
it. Thought it’d be cool. It DID
work.
But, then, I
tried it without the Coke and the Reynolds wrap still did the job, all on its
own.
To clean corrosion from car battery terminals: Pour a can
of Coca-Cola over the terminals to bubble away the corrosion. We
actually have a rusty old dead car battery in the
garage.
Tried it.
Thought it’d be cool. It didn’t work.
But, then, I
tried it with some Reynolds wrap (no Coke) and it came off beautifully.
Maybe we should be worried about the Reynolds wrap here.
To
loosen a rusted bolt: Applying a cloth soaked in Coca-Cola to the rusted bolt
for several minutes.
Tried it.
Thought it’d be cool. It didn’t work.
To bake a
moist ham: Empty a can of Coca-Cola into the baking pan, wrap the ham in
aluminum foil, and bake. Thirty minutes before the ham is finished, remove the
foil, allowing the drippings to mix with the Coke for a sumptuous brown
gravy.
This does work
and it’s good.
Also, turkey
breast marinated in Sprite is delicious. It’s true. Ah, vending
machine cuisine.
To remove grease from clothes: Empty a can of
coke into a load of greasy clothes, add detergent, and run through a regular
cycle. The Coca-Cola will help loosen grease
stains.
It will also clean
road haze from your windshield.
Tried the
laundry one. It didn’t work. Except, the road haze one kinda
did. But, it left my windshield all sticky. Next time, I used Windex
and that REALLY worked (who knew?) ... a lot better than sticky brown pop.
Who are all these people, trying this stuff on their windows and batteries
and stuff? Or, are they just claiming they’ve tried it in the hopes that
some doofus like me will copy them?
Well, I tried
it. And it wasn’t a very good method of cleaning road haze. What I
suffer in the name of scientific research.
For Your
Info:
The active ingredient in Coke is phosphoric acid. Its
pH is 2.8. It will dissolve a nail in about 4
days.
Coke actually
has a pH of 3. Yes, Coke contains phosphoric acid. So do a lot of
edible things. Beer also has a pH of 3. And vinegar. And you
know what’s TEN times more acidic than coke, being pH 2? Lemon
juice.
As for the nail. Tried it. Thought it’d be cool.
It didn’t work.
To carry Coca-Cola syrup (the
concentrate) the commercial truck must use the Hazardous material place cards
reserved for highly corrosive
materials.
Not true.
And if it was, the lemon trucks would really be in trouble. Also, I used
to work at McDonald’s, where we had boxed concentrate that spilled sometimes.
It was not acidic to the skin, at least not any more than
beer.
Also, the
concentrate comes in plastic bags stored in cardboard boxes. Violently
powerful acids aren't usually packaged in soft, thin, plastic and paper
containers.
The distributors of coke have been using it to
clean the engines of their trucks for about 20
years!
Oh,
please! Maybe they should buy some Reynolds Wrap though, ‘cause that stuff
kicks butt.
Few
people are capable of
expressing
with equanimity opinions
which
differ from the prejudices
of
their social environment.
Most
people are even incapable
of
forming such opinions.
--Albert
Einstein
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