Corrosive substance Corrosive substance A corrosive substance is one that will damage or destroy other substances with which it comes into contact by means of a chemical reaction. The word "corrosive" is derived from the Latin verb "corrodere", which means "to gnaw", indicating how these substances seem to "gnaw" their way through flesh or other materials. The word corrosive refers to any chemical that will dissolve the structure of an object. They can be acids, oxidizers, or bases. When they come in contact with a surface, the surface deteriorates. The deterioration can happen in minutes, e.g. concentrated muriatic acid spilled on skin;
Chemical stability state B if the Gibbs energy of the change from A to B is positive. Thermodynamic stability applies to a particular system. The reactivity of a chemical substance is a description of how it might react across a variety of potential chemical systems and, for a given system, how fast such a reaction could proceed. Chemical substances or states can persist indefinitely even though they are not in their lowest energy state if they experience metastability - a state which is stable only if not disturbed too much. A substance (or state) might also be termed "kinetically persistent" if it