EWWW! Via io9.
This video will let you see scientists do to a cheeseburger what Judge Doom did to that cartoon shoe in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. They dunk the cheeseburger in hydrochloric acid and see what happens. It’s not an explosion, but it’s a pretty good show all the same.
Hydrochloric acid is what’s swishing around your stomach, although a cheeseburger won’t make it to your stomach whole, unless your mother didn’t teach you any manners. Acids, for the most part, are also known as proton donors. They’ll detach a hydrogen nucleus – hydrochloric acid is HCl, and will cut that hydrogen loose – and let it float around water. The hydrogen will combine with water molecules and become a hydronium ion (H3O+). Ions are not safe things to have around. They can combine with other molecules, or they can rip electrons off of them. Either way, they mess up their structure, which is why acids dissolve things.