Title text:
Some surfaces may seem difficult to glue. But if you research the materials, find tables of what adhesives work on them, and prepare your surfaces carefully, you can fail to glue them in a fun NEW way that fills your house with dangerous vapors.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3194/
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“Bonds to everything but what you are working with.” Pretty much my experience.
This is only too true.
You also only have 3 minutes to mix them all before it starts curing
Now struggle to keep the awkwardly shaped parts in position while it cures. “Gah! It moved!!!”
Once applied, it can be gently shifted into any direction that makes alignment worse.
Upon which it instantly hardens, preventing you from shifting the parts back into alignment
From explain xkcd:
Polyethylvinylesteracetate
This appears to be a reference to Poly (ethylene-vinyl acetate), some formulations of which can be used as the adhesive in hot-glue guns. Vinyl acetate is an ester, so the inclusion of that term is redundant. The cadence of the constructed word may also be a reference to the television episode Lucy Does a TV Commercial and its memorable product “Vitameatavegamin”. It also resembles the kind of thing often seen in ingredients lists for common household products such as soaps and cleaners, which are fairly meaningless to the average person buying them.
2-Polyethylvinylesteracetate
This sounds almost exactly the same as the above item, but a name with a “2-” prefix generally indicates that the initial bit of the name is a functional group attached to the second position along a chemical chain (often being the carbon-carbon ‘spine’ of a molecule, in large-molecule organic chemistry), rather than attached to its end. Because the molecule name is (possibly deliberately) malformed, it’s hard to tell what is supposed to be attached to the second carbon of what subunit.
My first thought without looking anything up was that it was resin and hardener already mixed - cured epoxy.
This and the boat one tell me that dude just bought a boat and is into some boat repairs.
They forgot semen, that stuff sticks to everything, especially stuff you don’t want it to stick to… 💦
Should have been:
- Semen
- Hot water (to cure semen)
I’m in permanent awe that people manage to glue stuff together in ways that are good enough to be sold and used for years.
The only time I’ve used epoxy and had it truly last for years was when the handle came off of a cooking pot. It has held strong for 10+ years. I think the key was the plastic handle fit into a pressed metal fitting and the combination of that stabilization and the glue worked well.
One of the ingredients is best stored cold in the fridge and another is best stored at room temperature.
I keep superglue in the fridge. It really helps it last longer.
#16 must be in every super glue I use. Best use has been to remove the outer layer of my fingers.
FYI, you can remove it with nail polish remover (acetone).
It reacts with water so the moisture in your skin makes it set immediately.
Isn’t this what Lembit Funk was telling about when teaching us about that archaic musical instrument?
Would it be possible to make powdered magnets work…? Not as an adhesive, probably, although that would be pretty neat actually…
Like I know magnets are magnets because of the alignment of many many atoms, but say you powdered the magnets, somehow kept them from clumping up (because of course they would) and then applied a low-level magnetic field (or something a magnet would stick to, maybe?) to whatever you were setting the powder in, could you hypothetically make a magnetic table or something with it?
So magnetic tape (tape cassettes, VHS/Betamax, 8 tracks, etc) is powdered iron (II) oxide and works by being magnetized to write data to it. So yeah. Quick search revealed it’s totally a thing and you can buy it, primarily in industrial quantities.
As for a magnetic table, you don’t even need it powdered, hell you could probably just get two stainless steel sheets, four stainless steel strips, a matrix with holes in the proper positions, and a bunch of high powered small permanent magnets and make your own magnetic table without it being that difficult to make
Somebody’s been gluing (the wrong) stuff together…
Oh lol, someone got really frustrated with glue and I understand it. It is hard to find the right glue. Time to invent a machine mixing the glue based on the properties you need
