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Building Objects With Water

Posted by michael on from the shaky-foundations dept.

kjeldor writes "According to this NASA article, an experiment conducted on water in space shows that a metal loop dipped into water can sustain a thin membrane of water (just like soap bubbles) in diameters up to 4 or 5 inches without breaking. This surface can be moved around, painted on, etc. without breaking. Apparently, with the absence of gravity's pull to break the intermolecular forces, water has the ability to hold together into a membrane in an unconventional manner. This may lead to some interesting future projects."

3 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. Umm.... by Kevin+Stevens · · Score: 2, Insightful

    " This may lead to some interesting future projects."

    Because you have an easily accessible method of obtaining zero gravity???

    (could this be a driving force behind homebrew space vehicle projects?!)

  2. Re: Freezing Soap Bubbles by matthewcraig · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Since your hot breath will cool very quickly, the bubble will contract and the membrane become unstable. The bubble will implode in about a second. I recall trying this out, too.

  3. late post by mattr · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Very few posts and anyway nobody will ever see this.. but the posts accuse that this is scientifically unimportant.


    It doesn't sound like slashdot users are all equipped to make that determination. In fact, it has no relevance whether someone ever did this before or not.


    It has great use in describing creative scientific endeavor and a sense of aesthetics which is not only great for young people's education, but also may even get adults to understand one of the reasons why we should be in space.


    In addition and what I find most exciting aside from the beauty of the results, is that this is similar in some ways to the recently theorized methods of using radio waves to build large structures in outer space. It is not hard to imagine for example that with some innovative chemical processing or perhaps just timely freezing water-based structures could be interesting aids in engineering. (How about putting vegetable oil on the surface of a water sphere, dyeing the oil with a metallic poweder, and throwing it out the window? or maybe fuse it with an exothermic reaction? Voila, you have a radar reflector (maybe antennas could be built this way - magnetic fields and perhaps iron filings in water to make the form. Not to mention, frothing it with air bubbles as with an ultrasonic toothbrush might make light foamy structures possible once frozen.