A couple weeks ago when they called me back to the lab the supervisor had one of the clear polymer disks on their desk that had formed in a pint sample bottle that was about half full.
The sample recycling operator came across the occasional one that had polymerized, over months of identical ambient storage to the other bottles in the case which could still be handled as liquids.
Broke it out of the bottle and brought it into the office, where it was completely odorless and sitting there like a promotional acrylic paperweight with nothing embedded inside to promote :)
If this tank has a giant disk of clear acrylic at the bottom, it "might" be unprecedented to remove it intact and turn it into a fairly sizable lens if possible. If not clear, maybe even a mirror of some kind anyway.
Although there is probably some internal piping from inside the tank, embedded for display purposes primarily at this point ;)
Note that it doesn’t dry out; it polymerizes, and the reaction is catalyzed by water, which is why cyanoacrylate glues will stick your fingertips together instantly but will not as rapidly stick plastics or metals together.
Water but it's a bit of hit and miss that can turn soggy, better is bicarbonate that triggers are more or less instant reaction (often in baking powder in a pinch, but that's mostly a waste compared to just bicarb).
Often if one wants to make something "larger", dropping superglue, adding bicarb with a silt, blowing away and dropping another layer works fairly well (it's a bit of a brittle but still quite hard mass that is created quickly).
I think Polyolefin Primer (Permabond POP) is magical in what it can superglue. Beautiful chemistry allowing something like Teflon or steel to be glued. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9yz8OqThJk
They're made out of extremely cheap materials, so you're paying several times more for packaging and distribution than for the product. Then again, people pay to have water packaged and distributed, often when they have it on tap.
I expect something with a lot of small bubbles and cracks, also it also overheated and got weird decomposition and reactions, something like a overcooked/toasted meal. Reusing a comment that I made in a previous thread:
For comparison, there is a nice video by NileRed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phNLecfyWS8 He is making Bakelite that is a type of plastic. It's a tiny amount, in a lab, on purpose and he may make a few attempts. Anyway it overheat and instead of a nice piece of plastic he got a nasty block of foam with burned plastic. No imagine a huge tank of a similar chemistry reaction.
A contractor showed me how to fix dents in granite with superglue. It’s totally clear. The trick is to scrape it with a razor blade at a 90 degree angle (strait horizontal). The imperfections become nearly invisible.
I've been told this is a cheap way to fix small windshield cracks. Never tried it but sounds like it would work for the small spider sized and shaped cracks from small rock impacts.
This is basically what the glass repair kits sold at auto parts stores are. (They also include a suction cup with syringe, to vacuum any air bubbles out.)
