Glued To His Seat

November 7, 2005 on 9:45 am | In News | No Comments

In addressing the issue of a man who was accidentally glued to a toilet seat at Home Depot, I’m in no way seeking to minimize the seriousness of the situation. What I do intend to do, though, is answer the question that may be on some minds: ‘How exactly does super glue work, anyway?‘ After all, the stuff is pretty amazingly strong, even requiring that man to be carried out by the EMTs while he was still attached to the seat which had to be unbolted from the floor. That’s really strong!

So let’s get down to a somewhat non-technical explanation of how in the world super glue works. All that’s needed for super glue to attach something to something else is two things: (1) itself (which is nothing more than mere cyanoacrylate (pronounced sigh-ano-ACK-relate), which is an acrylic resin (a thermoplastic or thermosetting polymer) with the chemical formula C₅H₅NO₂ (5 Carbon atoms + 5 Hydrogen atoms + 1 Nitrogen atom + 2 Oxygen atoms) and (2) hydroxyl ions (free radicals in water), which are found on virtually all surfaces, including those that might seem to be dry, although the wetter the better. And also, since all surfaces at the molecular level are quite bumpy, there’s plenty of roughness for the blob of super glue to shape itself, getting a good “bite” to latch onto.

The whole sticking process is called anionic polymerization (a rapid, repeating, ionic chemical reaction that only stops when the resin is too hard to allow any further molecular movement). Cyanoacrylate molecules form tiny chains, turning into a durable plastic mesh, which soon hardens to form an incredibly hard, waterproof bond.

Let’s hope it doesn’t involve any fingers, or any more back sides.

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