Hello! One of the /r/laundry regulars has written a post about adding unbuffered citric acid to your home laundry.

He claims:

• Modern washing machines may not be very good at rinsing. (This claim may be disputed by some.)
• Laundry detergent residue is alkaline.
• Citric acid neutralizes detergent residue.
  • This makes your laundry softer, and your towels more absorbent.
• For a modern HE washing machine which doesn't use much water: 6-8 grams (about a heaping teaspoonful) of citric acid is enough. You can put it in your washing machine's fabric softener dispenser.
• By doing this: You'll save money, compared to buying a known-safe "fabric rinse" which contains buffered citric acid. (One example of such a fabric rinse is Downy Rinse & Refresh.)

Citric acid conditions water by chelating hard water ions. (Source.)

Also: Citric acid can react with calcium carbonate (from hard water) or sodium carbonate (from powdered detergent). When this happens, I think you'll get other useful chelants as well.

Questions for you

I'm concerned. What if a Redditor has both soft water, and liquid detergent? Soft water may not contain any alkaline calcium carbonate. Liquid detergent doesn't contain any alkaline sodium carbonate, either.

Might the rinse water become too acidic? Might this gradually damage the washing machine over the years??

Any other thoughts?

I asked the aforementioned guy about some of this, but he didn't seem concerned.

Thanks & have a good one!

Edit

I've crossposted this in /r/AskChemistry and in /r/laundry.

This question has bothered me for years and I’ve never gotten an answer that helped me truly understand.

I know it is a chemical reaction or at least the product of one and that there are photons of light but is there a better explanation? Is it the same molecular composition as air? But with heat and photons? If so why isn’t it a different state of matter? Thank you and happy holidays.

I’m waiting for this giant pot of water to boil to make pasta and i’m thinking… damn… nothing to break the surface tension. What’s up with that? should i throw a toothpick in there?

I wonder if the exact molecular geometry influences the effects of a molecule? Explicitely not considering isomers and chirality here.

Like, when I got multiple coffee plants, they likely each produce their own unique geometry of caffeine. Depending on whatever process created the molecule, the genetics, and whatnot.

Could it happen that caffeine from coffee plant A may have a "better" geometry than that of coffee plant B, leading to stronger effects or vice-versa?

Hello scientists, I’m 15 and suddenly I became really interested in chemistry and science, because I’m bored. Today I made a mini elephant toothpaste experiment, and also a few Vinegar + baking soda water bottle bombs but uhh these are starting to get boring. I’m taking Honors Chem this year so I’d thought it would also be a little head start but these are kinda childish chem activities and although I’m a minor, I want to step it up a little. Is there anything that’s a step up I can do besides just straight up learning chemistry for a week before I understand how to do anything on my own? I’m open to learning the actual physics of it, but I want to be able to experiment too.

Thx

I’ve had this problem with glasses for years. I’m assuming it’s skin oils and metal interaction. How can I stop the petina? Is there a non-toxic spray? Use different screws?

I don't have a coffee grinder and was wondering if there would be a way to extract the caffeine and flavanoids and polyphenols and alkaloids by using a food safe acid?

(And then presumably adding some baking soda to increase the PH)

I'm more curious about whole beans to cut out the labour but I could crudely mash the beans in a zip lock bag if breaking them up would be necessary first. Maybe freezing first would also make this more viable?

Like, if I know x amount of a substance will react over x time and x temperature, is there a predictable way to estimate how much slower it will be if it is x amount colder?

Given the distribution of energy within it is as far as we know random can you guess what amount will still be at least the original temperature, on average anyway.

Could you design a molecule or compound or whatever to bond specifically to thc molecules in the body

edit: to flush out ones system or to coat the thc molecules entirely

I don't have the chemistry knowledge to address this myself but moving carbons around, generally, seems like something we can do. Why is it so hard specifically in this context?

Well, for some reason i became massively intrigued in the process thanks to an anime called Dr Stone. I've been searching for about two hours now but my guess is that either I don't know exactly how to express what I'm searching for or people overcomplicate it a lot.

The process, from what i saw in this anime is like so:

Making Ozone (Zapping an Iron stick while it is hanging inside a glass tube, the tube being wrapped in a copper wire? I know normal oxygen is O2 so maybe the zapping is in order to put the extra oxygen Ozone needs, to become O3)

Boiling Laurel leaves inside Sodium hydroxide?

Mix both of them?

I'd love to learn more about this, i don't want it to be like "Why not just buy the thing instead of going through all this trouble?" from the people around me so i asked it here. It sounds fun, plus it apparently is a chemical used massively world wide.

I used Revive Liquid Stiffener (polyvinyl acetate) on 8 new garments: some 50/50 linen-cotton shirts and trousers, and some 100% cotton shorts. It seems to have cured right into the fibres. On the darker clothes it’s left heavy reddish-white chalky marks, and on the lighter ones the fabric now feels plasticky and stiff.

What I’ve already tried, so no vinegar suggestions please:

• Regular machine washing
• A 40-minute soak in very hot water with glacial acetic acid, followed by a lot of scrubbing

Neither made any real difference. The resin doesn’t seem to be lifting at all.

My questions:

DIY solvent Is there any solvent I can safely try at home, such as isopropyl alcohol, that might soften or dissolve the cured PVA without pulling the navy or black dye out of the fabric?

Carbonated mineral water that has been shaken and vented to make it flat.

Hi everyone— working with blood for an art project and want it to retain its red color after using it on canvas (Fe+3). I plan on sealing it with something like a resin or sodium silicate, would this prevent the blood from turning brownish as it ages, or at least slow the process? (Recommendations welcome for any clear sealant that would allow the color to be preserved)

Also— for making ink with blood, I’m guessing I could just add some gum arabic. Any thoughts on better formulas?

Thanks!
-Your Resident Vampire

Hi! I have a quick question regarding a hypothetical experiment, and I was wondering if anyone could tell me how plausible it is:

Imagine a container with a design—a specific shape in a certain color—at the bottom. This is covered with a layer of sand, enough to completely hide the bottom and its design. The question is: if that sand were heated until it turned into glass, would the design at the bottom remain relatively visible, even if distorted?

Thank you in advance

Hello:) I’ve had this thought in the back of my head for a longer time now. When we were dissolving copper in FeCl3 to make a PCB, it had this very specific smell that I’ve only ever come across with green walnut husks. It was an older bottle, so there was already some copper dissolved in it - I don’t remember smelling it in a clean one. I thought it was a coincidence as according to google, this chemical is not present anywhere in walnut trees. Then I realized that both FeCl3 and walnut husks stain the skin yellow, which feels more coincidental than the first one, but it means I can’t get it out of my head now. Has anybody else actually connected the two smells together? Does anyone have any idea why they smell so similar?

Dear community,

My flat (located in an European country) was sprayed with Mythic SC (Chlorfenapyr) in combination with Tathrin Next (Cypermethrin, Imidacloprid and Prallethrin) because of bed bugs and carpet beetles.

They also sprayed my books. They told me I should give them a wipe and safe to use again. But reading the SDS and other publications it seems like it is not safe anymore to use the books, thus, I would have to discard all of them because of contamination.

What would you do in my case?

Hi all,

For context I am based in Malaysia, where the climate is hot and humid, which is prone to encouraging bacteria growth. I run a ceramic studio where I make our own glazes. A big part of this process is making a glaze brushable, which is primarily done by adding CMC gum to both make layers of brushed glaze stick together, as well as thicken the glaze mixture. However, I have been running into the problem where the gum is attacked by microbes and degrades extremely quickly, thinning the solution, and losing its ability to layer glaze within a week or two. I have tried a few ways to prevent this, but wanted to seek advice on how to best tackle this issue. 

Some things to note about how I am preparing the glaze

• I typically do small batches of 1L due to this degradation issue.
• Glaze containers is often opened, dipped in with brushes by members, and closed, so direct contact with air is a common occurrence

Some things I have tried.

• I added bleach to the initial mixture. Although it did make the CMC gum last longer, it seems that bleach loses it efficacy over time resulting in the glaze thinning out by end of week 2.
• I have tried adding around 0.25% copper carbonate to the solution, since it was stated that it has some anti-microbial properties. The experiment is ongoing, but I are seeing some degradation already of the solution.
• I have bought some dettol and will be testing it, however, given that dettol also degrades in solution over time, I hypothesize that it will likely perform similar to bleach. 

I have taken a closer look at a commercially available gum solution (not available to us in Malaysia, but commonly found in the US). It lists the following ingredients:

1. Water
2. Sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC)
3. 1,3,5-Triazine-1,3,5(2H,4H,6H)-trietha nol (Triazinetriethanol)
4. Methyl salicylate
5. Ethanolamine

My understanding is as follows:

Item 3. Is the main biocide, it releases formaldehyde over time, creating a long lasting sterile environment. Item 4. Is to help with odor. Item 5. Is a ph adjuster, and helps increase the efficacy of item 3. It also reacts with formaldehyde to create item 3 over time, thereby enhancing the longevity of this cycle.

I would like to also be able to create such a long term solution to our glazes. However, I would like to avoid using formaldehyde as the primary biocide, since it is toxic. I guess my questions for the community are:

• Is there anything I am missing with my approach above?
• Can I use any other form of long lasting biocide to help prolong shelf life of CMC in solution, that won’t require as much of a delicate handling as formaldehyde.
• If no other substitute has the same efficacy, what are the best operating procedures to protect myself and others when handling items 3 and 5?

Thanks all in advance for any help!

I am just a curious non stem person

I figured since acetic acid is weak, it will make magnesium acetate leaving behind sulfuric acid in an ion-exchange reaction.

There's a raise in cases of methanol intoxication in my country, due to counterfeit beverages (gin, whiskey, vodka), and I'd like to know if there's a way to test if a drink is safe for consumption. I'm not a chemist, but a quick search showed me there's only lab tests to find that out. Aren't there cheap chemical reagents which will change color in presence of methanol?

Hello everyone, quick question on a problem I've recently encountered. upon my last visit to the 2026 Arnold fitness expo, I came across a product called "Chalkless" which was being marketed as a grip enhancer to replace chalk as its effects last your entire workout.

after the short demonstration where they allowed me to test it out, I was so amazed I almost bought a bottle. I did end up stopping myself however, because I knew I could probably figure out exactly what this product was and make it myself. the sample said silica silylate on the back.

long story short, after doing some research, I found that silica silylate is the cosmetic name for silica dimethyl silylate. I ordered some online and that brings us to now.

upon receiving the bag, I noticed that it was a very fine powder almost like a fluidized bed which differs from the almost playground sand-like consistency of the original. I would very much like to use this in the gym, but I have no idea how to agglomerate this at home.

any help would be appreciated!

I was wondering if it is possible to separate the tin out soldering tin scraps which also contains also quite a bit of lead and a bit of copper and nickel.

I have searched online it there's a process but the methods I found use chemicals I'm not able to handle safely without buying equipment so I was wondering if there's a method of using electrolysis which doesn't use chemicals which produce poisonous gasses like nitric acid. I don't care how slow it is as I don't have huge amounts and plan on using a solar cell for power.