Chemical properties of the stuff you put on chips!! (Vinegar in general)

Member Name: Ric!

Product:	Vinegar in general
Date:	01/06/01 (29831 review reads)
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Advantages: Cheap, Tastey, Can do fun experiments at home with it.

Disadvantages: Dangerous in its concentrated form.

Vinegar - you can buy it in any supermarket or grocery store. It's cheap and nice on chips. That's probably all the information you actually need to know or want to know about it. But I'm going to tell you a little bit more......

Other names for vinegar: Ethanoic Acid, Acetic Acid, Methane Carboxylic Acid. (Household vinegar is simply diluted with water.)

Chemical Formula: CH3COOH or HC2H3O2

Molecular Weight: 60.05

Vinegar is produced from fermentation of sugars. The starting materials needed for vinegar production can be any fruit or source of sugars. Thus, this is how we get different types of vinegar like malt vinegar, red/white wine vinegar, cider vinegar etc.

The fruit sugars are feremented with yeast to convert the sugar to alcohol (CH3CH2OH). The ethanol is then oxidized (oxygen added) to form acetic acid (CH3COOH). This is done using bacteria.

Vinegar can also be used for a range of other purposes, than eating. These include;

- The making of a range of acetate esters such as vinyl acetate and cellulose acetate, the raw materials for a type of polyester.

- The production of acetic anhydride which is used to make aspirin.

Enough of the boring written chemistry. Vinegar is a chemical, so are there any practical experiments you can do at home to recreate the good old days in the labs at school? Yes, there are! Why not try this one:

Fire Extinguisher Experiment.
Place a short candle, a slightly taller candle, and a small dish or small glass filled with baking soda in the bottom of a large bowl. Both candles should be below the top of the bowl. Light both candles. Then pour vinegar into the dish of baking soda. Observe what happens.

Once you've done it, you'll want to know why it does that. Well, when vinegar is combined with baking soda, the two react and produce carbon dioxide gas. Carbon dioxide gas is heavier than the air so
it sinks into the bottom of the bowl. More and more carbon dioxide gas is produced which begins to slowly fill up the bowl. When the level of carbon dioxide has risen to the level of the flame, the flame will go out from lack of oxygen.

That's it. Lesson over for today!

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