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Comment by m463 | Hacker News Reader

Mixing peanut butter and gum.

As a matter of fact, it is a perfect solution for getting out gum stuck in your hair.

It just dissolves.

Another unexpected solvent I found was when I was a teenager working on a gasoline engine. Don't pour gasoline in a styrofoam cup. The gas went right through the cup, like it wasn't even there. Ate a hole anywhere it touched.

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My co-workers once told me their experience about caring for an older epileptic patient. Many patients with epilepsy continue to take the same meds for decades if the meds work for them, which means you’ll encounter some ancient drugs.

This patient was ordered chloral hydrate, which is given in liquid form. One of the younger nurses went to give them med in a styrofoam cup, only be shocked that the cup had melted.

Acetone works great too. It's very useful for getting rid of styrofoam from packing because you can reduce several cubic feet of styrofoam to a brick 1/100th the size and then throw that away instead.

And who doesn't like a room filled with that fragrance?

Definitely do it in a well-ventilated area or wear a P100 like anything else. Even "odorless" mineral spirits have a very strong solvent odor.

I actually had the opportunity to try the peanut butter to remove gum from hair once, but my child just cut it out before I could get ready. The beginning of the mullet haircut season. (I was SAHD but with the self-cut hair, my wife (at the time) insisted on an immediate emergency hair cut at some fancy salon place, and the mullet was determined to be the only choice available. The gum was stuck about 2 inches above the bangs, so shortening the bangs to that length was a substantial committment). Anyways, I digress.

> Another unexpected solvent I found was when I was a teenager working on a gasoline engine. Don't pour gasoline in a styrofoam cup. The gas went right through the cup, like it wasn't even there. Ate a hole anywhere it touched.

Isn't that basically how to diy napalm?

Yes, though when doing it on purpose, you try to dissolve as much styrofoam into it as you can to get it closer to being a gel.

Not something to do out of curiosity though, fumes given off while burning are exactly something to be avoided.

But now you have peanut butter hair!

you can get that out with jelly and bread.

Gasoline's abilities as a solvent led to it being used as a dry cleaning agent at one time.

...and its flammability is what lead to the use of chlorinated solvents:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cleaning#History

Yes. But it was effective.

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