Why is Adding Acid To Water Safer Than Adding Water to Acid?

When you dilute a strong acid, a lot of heat is released very quickly. If you are steadily adding the acid to a container of water instead, then the heat will be dissipated much more effectively throughout the water.This is something I have seen in a school lab a few years back. Some nasty acid burns on the person's neck and hands. And it was exactly this that caused it. Water into acid.I'm down for this, gonna have water over the drum skins so splashes are everywhere while I play. We can have some sick graphics of acid reactions as album covers and live effects.

Take this even further and if you were to add the water to the acid, the very first water to hit the container full of acid can cause a violent enough reaction that the liquid flying out and landing on you will be concentrated acid at a high temperature. Literally boiling acid on your skin, eyes, clothes. On top of this, the worst thing you can do at this point is wash the acid off with water because that creates more heat. It's a mess. Don't mess up the order.FYI, using varying levels of acetic acid concentrations to was acid off of you. Higher to lower concentrations. This allows for washing the acid off without creating a large exothermic reaction.

It's a huge mistake in chemical safety to think "Oh, my lab partner was exposed to a chemical reactive with water, I better keep him or her dry as hell." Nope. Remove the clothing for sure, but if he/she has any of that on the skin, your only choice is to either have the harmful reaction happen with the water on that person's skin, or with the water of the deluge shower. Deluge shower always; it's a large volume of water, it will wash away the bad stuff, and it will help cool the burned flesh.Because getting a 1:1 neutralization is hard, and base on your skin is in most cases more horrible then the acid. The base dissolves skin and everything under skin (whereas most concentrated acids only dissolve top skin layers) without pain, whilst the acids hurt like hell.

That's amazing, they're so lucky. I got very minor burns to the inside of my nostrils from breathing while looking down a drain that was being cleaned with Drano crystals when I was younger, and even that was such a terrifying and painful thing at the time. I can't imagine getting a whole lungful of something corrosive. Chemical burns suck.But, unless you're particular stupid or clumsy you're not going to get a BLVE unless you're working with something like concentrated sulfuric or fuming nitric or something like that.As well as what _Cruxer said, most acids when concentrated are 1. more viscous than water, slowing dissipation of heat and 2. more dense than water, causing the water to remain at the top when placed into concentrated acid instead of the acid sinking into the water when a small amount of acid is added to the water.