wouldn’t this evaporate extremely quick though?
at least it wouldn’t wet your socks. i think capillary action relies on surface tension
It relies on differences in surface tension. If a liquid has a lower surface tension (energy) towards one surface than another, you get the typical capillary effect. In the case of water, the water-air energy is lower than the water-<whatever your capillary is made of> energy, so you get a capillary effect.
If water had exactly zero surface tension against every interface,
- it would not exhibit any capillary action
- life on earth would cease to exist quite quickly
- your socks would remain dry
life on earth would cease to exist quite quickly
your socks would remain dry
life on earth would cease to exist quite quickly
This was the first thought that came to my mind on seeing this post.
For starters, basicaly most (all?) land based plants are fucked, they can no longer internally hydrate, also water in soil behaves totally differently, so …yeah.
(oh on that note, snap your fingers and water has 0 surface tension? time for a lot of landslides/sinkholes in humid areas)
Then you’ve got beings with active circulatory systems, who… may to some extent be able to live, but lots of pulmonary / circulatory problems are gonna happen.
I guess maybe totally waterborne life could survive, maybe… but 0 surface tension of water probably changes how salinity works…
Yeah, this would be very bad, lol.
If we want to go to extremes, zero surface tension means no nucleation barrier for critical bubbles. In practice, this implies that liquid water is unstable, and will spontaneously vaporise at all conditions.
So yeah, all life ends pretty quickly.
Wow, that’s much worse lol!
It’d evaporate much quicker TBF. Although that also means that the BP would be much lower and tea and coffee wouldn’t be a thing and boiling wouldn’t be a reliable method of cooking. although on the flip side, you could increase the strength of alcoholic beverages by boiling the water off instead of distilling the alcohol.
Yep. Generally if one property of it was so different, I’d expect many others to be different as a result of that too. So physics and chemistry as we know them (with so many things relying on water) wouldn’t exist. And thinking further how life on Earth started off in the water…
It would instead instantly make it extremely obvious how uneven my floor is.
I think that’s part of our anthropic bias, not sure we’d be alive without water’s surface tension in order to observe this.
Well cells wouldn’t be circle shaped, but would it actually be to the detriment of life in that or other ways?
Maybe cells could take a more pragmatic shape, like tactical dicks
Trees wouldn’t exist, so life would definitely look different.
What are you on about?
Capillary action doesn’t happen without surface tension, so long stemmed woody plants are out. Iirc, mushrooms were not super common before trees and spread by decomposing them, so those are gone too
I think that could make some life-supporting chemical reactions difficult to happen, but I’m not qualified to judge that.
I don’t, not that I am qualified to say so either! The larger surface area might be beneficial for osmosis!
I’m also not qualified, but I do wonder whether releasing all that surface tension inside us would alleviate a lot of anxiety. I think yes.
I’m qualified, our brains would immediately stop functioning and that does tend to relieve anxiety.
That’s how gasoline spills (on water) work. They cover the water about one molecule thick.
So you’re saying my floor needs to be water?
At 2 micrometers, it’s going to evaporate too fast for there to be a
puddlethin film of water.Well if water didn’t have its unique properties of cohesion and adhesion we likely wouldn’t be here anyways.
We would not have life! Water is a polar molecule that is very different from most other liquids. Its the specific surface tension properties that help to create life. The reason why we search for planets with water. We’ve never worked out a way for any life to exists without the amazing H2O.
Now imagine what wonders we could have if there were a few other quicky molecules.
Every molecule is quirky in its own way…
That’s what my mum says! But my dad says my half life is too long?
What if it just applied to chlorinated tap water then
As an odd thought experiment or are we hoping that the laws of physics might be different there? All water, except brand new in reaction space is almost certainly going to contain dissolved ions
Well I think the idea is more that for some reason water needs to be treated with something that removes surface tension if you want to safely pipe it to people’s houses. At least that shouldn’t destroy all life.
look…I’m just glad roaches don’t have sharp teeth and spiders can’t fly.
let’s stop while we’re ahead
When some spiders are born, sometimes hundreds at a time, they cast little parachute webs and ride the wind to wherever they might go.
Palmetto bugs are like mean flying roaches that bite.
You’ll never escape the horrors of the beauty in nature.
Let’s stop
while we’re ahead“Palmetto bugs” are just roaches, period. That name refers to either the Florida woods cockroach or the American cockroach.
That would actually be a very useful tool for machinists. I think it would make it much easier to find out how non-flat something is
You can add a wetting agent to water to decrease the surface tension
wetter water
Add more water
I know a guy who drank some WaterWetter and got pretty sick. He was an idiot.
I read that in Meatwad’s voice.
made me reread it
Only Rick Sanchez can make a floor that level, and then only 1 square meter.
Season 8 is really good so far. They’re taking the stories in a new direction that I really like. I think Justin Roiland leaving might have actually been a positive for the writing.
Then your cells would die and plants wouldn’t exist
