The Science Behind Nail Polish

I happen to be one of those girls that enjoys having her nails painted...  And because of that, a lot of the time I often find myself wondering "how in the world does this stuff work???"

Well, thanks to this magical thing called the internet I found that our average nail polish is made from this stuff called nitrocellulose.

Nitrocellulose is what makes your nails all nice and shiny when they dry.  BUT the stuff is EXTREMELY explosive!!!  So I think the stores have found a way to make it less blowy uppy 'cause I'm not seeing anyone's nails blowing up for no reason.

Now, another question is probably popping up into your brain, "How does the nail polish stick?"

Well, it dries from lots of different resins and plasticizers (which are made of some sort of gross, fatty, acid that I can't spell let alone pronounce...  or castor oil).  But without these, our precious nail polish would crack even MORE easily that it does now!!!!!!!!!!!

Moving onto a certain polish that I'm sure we've ALL gawked at, wondering "HOW DID IT DO THAT" is crackle/shatter nail polish.  Yes, that's right, the stuff that's super duper cool!  You apply and within a good hour it dries, the polish creates a cool "cracked" look.

Crackle nail polish is mostly made of two components, nitrocellulose, and ethanol.  The ethanol is a quick moving substance that does not give the nitrocellulose time to dry "evenly" giving the polish the cool crackle effect.

Ok, one more question: "WHY IN THE WORLD DOES SHELLAC/GEL NAIL POLISH STAY ON LONGER THAN REGULAR NAIL POLISH???????"

First off, shellac isn't even made of the components as regular polish.  Instead, it's made with methacrylate monomers.  It's then mixed with benzoyl peroxide (normally) to help initiate   "hemolytic bond polish" (a process that makes an electron pair to "break off").  A lot of other scientific stuff is also thrown into the mixture as well as their purposes but it honestly confuses me...  And will probably confuse y'all as well...

Anywho, I hope you found this interesting as well as entertaining and educational.  I know I learned a lot, it was hard to figure out how to put everything in my own words...  I had to look up quite a few definitions and different characteristics of the different chemicals.

Question of the day:  What was the most fascinating science topic you have ever learned about?
Me:  Probably that I can make my own rock candy...  I'm hopeless...