Rusting is considered to be an oxidation process in which a chemical reaction takes place. The metal reacts to the liquid poured over it, for example, water, in which oxygen creates a reaction over the metal, causing it to rust. The initial experiments by professors indicated that the investigation conducted by Crace Calvert in 1871 showed the first stage of rusting due to the presence of carbonic acid and its conversion to atmospheric oxygen since it is inherent in the moisture (Nature, 1906). Later, in 1898, another chemistry expert revealed that pure oxygen in the water attacks the iron that becomes the cause of ferrous oxide and hydrogen peroxide. A certain part of hydrogen peroxide converts ferrous oxide into rust, and the rest of the part directly comes in contact with the iron, which is seen in the form of corrosion.

The goal of this research is to evaluate what liquid rusts the metal the fastest. For this intent, a hypothesis is formulated, which is:

If water, orange juice, coke, apple juice, and vinegar are tested to see what liquid will rust the fastest, it is hypothesized that orange juice will rust the fastest. The reason is that it is the most acidic and carries the most amount of acid.

Background Discussion

Have you ever thought about why nails rust? How is the rust formed? To answer these questions, it becomes interesting to see what types of liquids would cause rust. Various metal objects are destroyed by rust, such as slates, bikes, and tools, etc. To prevent these objects from rusting quickly, a variety of liquids are observed for their reaction to the metal. It would help in deciphering how and what causes the metal objects to rust. Researchers have investigated that rust is a compound of iron oxide hydrate. Iron oxide is a chemical, and corrosion is an example of rusting (Grafen et al., 2015).

Research from old times has suggested that there are certain conditions under which rust takes place. The iron is not likely to rust when carbonic acid is not present (Nature, 1907). It has been witnessed that despite taking extra precaution that traces of carbonic acid are not there, the chemical reaction of liquid water and oxygen over the iron caused rust. It was assumed that alkalis could have given rise to the production of rust even when the carbonic acid was not there. However, there was another condition that polished iron when immersed in the solution of potassium dichromate, the rusting process is absent, and the surface of iron remains untouched (Nature, 1907).

Sine different conditions apply when rust has to take place on metal. The difference in the polished surface of the steel or iron nails has different results for rust or corrosion. For example, the common nail can continue to rust when exposed to air or water as the surface of the rustic layer is evident after some time in hydration (Lee, 2007). Electro-galvanized nails that are covered with zinc are not as tough to corrosion as hot-dipped nails. The coating surface on the nail protects the iron from rusting, and the irons holding power is prolonged. The vinyl coating extends this effect as the oxidization does not take place easily on the metal surface.

An investigation was run to check whether the rust is transferred from one surface to another, and the results showed that it is impossible (Micallef, 2019). Even if in a jar full of rusted nails and after shaking the jar, the surface of rusted nails could be damaged, but the rust cannot be transferred from one surface to another. Even if polished nails are kept within the jar, the surface of polished nails could be damaged with shaking and rubbing against the rusted nails, making them susceptible to being rusted. Otherwise, the results from the experiment itself did not reveal any rusting taking place in the absence of water and only by transferring from one area to another.

Waldman (2016) stated that exposure to dampness in the air creates rust. The production of hydrated oxide takes place from the reaction of oxygen with water that is present in the air. The rust cannot take place in dry air. Rust always occurs in moist air along with the presence of water. The chemicals of oxygen,...

Discussion and Conclusion

For water to be considered mineral water, which is commonly used as drinking bottled water, the water needs to have a mineralization content of 1000 mg/L (Pietrucha-Urbanik, Skowronska & Papciak, 2020). The reason why the water did not cause rust over the steel nail could be due to the very factor that the presence of certain minerals prevented this process from happening. Since rust is caused by oxidizing with oxygen and carbon dioxide, the dissolution of metal might have been prevented due to dissolved gases such as hydrogen sulfide. The corrosion resistance needs additional exploration in a wide array of minerals and their reaction on steel iron or metal.

The least corrosion effect in orange juice is fascinating to note since orange juice has acidity levels that are believed to cause rust, or even in rusted surfaces, it removes rust. However, a study produced similar results with the current research, where the least corrosion was seen on a piece of mild steel by orange juice compared to pineapple and cashew fluid (Hamzat et al., 2020).

Vinegar, coke, and apple juice are the ones that have caused the highest corrosion results in the current research; however limited data is available for the corrosion effects of coke and apple juice, while vinegar shows the highest acceleration for rusting. For this reason, it contains a dilute formulation of acetic acid, and the positive hydrogen ions in this acid eliminate the electrons from iron, causing an oxidization effect by ionizing it and making it more vulnerable to rust (Thirumalai et al., 2020).

Therefore, it is concluded that the hypothesis that orange juice would cause the fastest rusting of metal is negated since the results showed that most of the observed rusting days were for apple juice, coke, and vinegar. Water showed no results regarding rusting, although oxidization of iron has been proved to be in the water the most due to the presence of oxygen gas. There is a possibility that it was due to the…