Sour Patch Kids and International Spy Movies

Acids have also been made famous by their use in spy movies. James Bond, for example, often carries an acid-filled gold pen. When Bond is captured and imprisoned—as inevitably happens at least one time in each movie—he squirts some acid out of his pen and onto the iron bars of his cell. The acid quickly dissolves the metal, allowing Bond to escape. Although acids do not dissolve iron bars with the ease depicted in the movies, they do dissolve metals. A small piece of aluminum placed in hydrochloric acid, for example, dissolves away in about 

When we say that acids dissolve metals, we mean that acids react with metals in a way that causes them to go into solution as metal cations. Bond s pen is made of gold because gold is one of the few metals that is not dissolved by most aoids (see Section 16.5). 

When a person eats a sour food, H ions from the acid in the food react with protein molecules in the taste cells of the tongue. This interaction causes the protein molecules to change shape, triggering a nerve impulse to the brain that the person experiences as a sour taste. 

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