Spilt hot chocolate on MacBook pro

Question

Hi,
My brother accidentally spilt a bit of hot chocolate on my MacBook Pro (see below for details). It turned off the moment it happened. I dried all the hot chocolate, and cleaned out the ports with a cotton bud. When I plug the charger in, the battery indicator lights illuminate, but the light on the actual charger doesn't turn on. It is half charged. It's also pretty self explanatory that it doesn't turn on. I'm pretty scared, and I need some help. That would be appreciated!

Answer 1

Hi, Ogelthorpe. May I put my two cents in here?
Just as water by itself is of little use in cleaning up greasy spills and stains, and hydrocarbon solvents like acetone and tricholoroethylene are of little use in cleaning up protein spills and stains (milk, cream, blood, etc.), it seems likely to me that whatever solvent is used in aerosol electronics cleaners has its limitations too. Most of the posters here who dump liquids into their computers stick to water-based liquids that we humans can drink, and as long as they're still wet, water itself can be expected to dissolve and wash away most of the resulting contaminants — though I don't by any means recommend rinsing one's computer out in the kitchen sink. But once the water in what's been spilled evaporates and whatever residue it leaves behind has settled in for the long haul, I'm not sure any one kind of solvent or cleaner can be depended upon to a) soften up, b) lift off, and c) float away all the kinds of residues we are inventive and careless enough to deposit in our computers. Consider orange pulp, milk solids, sugars of all kinds, and the various fruit and vegetable oils that are present as traces in some of the drinks we consume. I'm not aware of any solvent that will dissolve orange pulp, though water will soften it. Milk solids, present in hot chocolate mixes of all kinds, used to be used as an extremely durable paint base, highly resistant to solvents including water. I don't think any hydrocarbon-based solvent will touch crystallized sugars. And even if electronics cleaner does loosen up and float off all these and more of the varied residues of our spills, how can we be certain those residues are actually being carried all the way off the parts we're trying to clean, not just being moved around and then left behind again, perhaps less localized and in lower concentrations, but still present? I strongly suspect that the impossibility of being sure about this is precisely why Apple never tries to clean liquid spills, but instead just replaces all the affected parts. For those who can't afford to pay Apple or an authorized service provider but who can afford a degree of uncertainty about the effectiveness of cleaning, and who aren't afraid to take their machines completely apart, electronics cleaner is probably worth a try. But there may be spills against which it's powerless. And if a spill has caused a running machine to shut down, the chances are good that electrical damage has already been done and cleaning alone, no matter how thorough, won't bring it back to life.