Science In Action: Corrosion Never Bothered This Girl, Until...

Hey! This is ya girl Gail, delivering on a promise that she has made on this platform a year ago (read: Of Communities and Giving Back). I mentioned that I'm going to write about science using a fun, simple and practical approach. This will be the first post in the series that I will call "Science In Action." This is a no-brainer right? Wrong. The gap between the actual and theoretical cannot be denied. You can read all the science books in the world but still see a phenomenon that you can't fit to a theory. So why do I do it? Because I want to help make science more accessible to my audience. I want to incorporate science in a content that I wish I had read growing up. My women Anne and Rox inspired me to do this. These girls do awesome scientific posts on their blogs too, check them out zarinsbeautylab and proteancreatorconfessions!

By day, I work in a watch manufacturing company based in one of the cities in Cebu. Working with metals as raw materials make corrosion our public enemy number one. Like the many undesirable phenomenon that we don’t want to happen in our lives, there’s no stopping mother nature from doing what she was designed to do. As proactive creatures who are under mama nature's rule, we can design processes/structures that will mitigate the effects that we don't desire. I have read and studied about corrosion to understand more about what happens on the microscopic scale. Thus, I boldly claimed,

"Corrosion never bothered me anyway."

_{Never Mind The Rust and Pose Like Iron (III) Oxide Won’t Make That Bridge Fall or Something. Tetanus? Meh. But on a serious note though. Do not take tetanus lightly.}

But like any other mortal, I was wrong. Corrosion did bother me. The symptoms were subtle.

Sometime around a month ago, the charger of my laptop was not lighting up even after connecting it to its port. I have developed this method of pulling and pushing the connector out until I hit that sweet spot and finally have the light activated. At first, I had a little fun with it. Guessing the frequency of pulling and pushing that I had to do to turn it on became a game. The fun then started to turn into annoyance especially when I had reports to submit and I was in a hurry.

I took a good look at my charger and voila -

_{Macbook Magsafe 2 Connector Pogo Pins}

The charger pins were already showing signs of corrosion. This could have been due to moisture contact in my bag. I place the charger directly in my bag exposed to the moisture from my perfume, alcohol, water and moisture from the air.

According to Apple’s MagSafe Patent:
“The surface area of two magnetically attracted halves (of the connector pins and the port) determines the number of magnetic flux lines and therefore the holding force between them because the holding force is proportional to the contact area between the two magnetically attracted halves.”

Corrosion was in action on the pogo pins. Magnets are more effective when a uniform solid structure of iron is connected to another end. Having rust on the metal end introduces a foreign matter on the otherwise uniform connection of the magnetic ends. The rust was adding resistance for the current to flow. That's why I had a hard time finding the sweet spot that activated the charging of my laptop.

With this information in mind along with an advice from a friend, I took a toothbrush and scraped the rust off of the connector pins. I also scraped the rust off the port.

_{Macbook Magsafe 2 Connector Port}

I tried to test the effect of this interim action and for the first tries, I observed a lag in the light activation. After waiting for a few seconds, the charger light lit up. After three separate occasions, I have noticed that the time for the light to get activated decreased with each try. Apparently, the first interim action that I employed work. I admit, however, that this is not a permanent solution to the problem. I will have to protect the connector with plastic or anything that is moisture resistant to prevent it from rusting again.

Summing it all up:

• corrosion bothers this girl because it is detrimental to her productivity
• the MagSafe 2 charger is corroded thus she needed to find a way to get rid of the rust
• one of the ways to work around this is to scrape the rust off with an abrasive, a toothbrush or a q-tip with damped alcohol

Do you know of any other permanent solution to this problem? Aside from buying a new charger of course, that would cost me a fortune! Let me know in the comments section below.