system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do corrosive materials not eat through their containers? Ex: What makes glass impervious to acid?

I've been wondering this ever sense middle school... Does it have something to do with the strength of the corrosive material? What's to stop an extremely strong acid from eating through everything?
gpt
Acids generally work by donating protons, generally shown in chemical reactions as H+, a hydrogen atom that has no electron. 

In order for an acid to react with another chemical, that chemical must have free electrons to react with the proton donated by the acid. 

Silicon Oxide (glass) is a completely stable chemical compound that has no free electrons, and so cannot react with acids.

It doesn't so much have to do with the strength of the corrosive material as it does with how different chemicals react with each other.

However, there is one acid that will eat through glass, Hydrofluoric acid.
This is actually because of the fluoride, instead of the strength of the acid. Hydrofluoric acid is extremely dangerous to use and is probably the most dangerous and corrosive of the acids, however its 'acidic strength' is much weaker than many other acids. This is because of how we rank acid strength, which is based on how easily it donates a proton, not how easily it dissolves things.