Slashdot Mirror
A Liquid That Turns Solid When Heated
Roland Piquepaille writes "There are some sure things in life, such as death and taxes. When you are heating a solid, you expect it will melt and when you're boiling water, you're pretty certain that it will turn into vapor. But what about a liquid that becomes solid when it's heated? Of course, it has already been done, for example in the chemical process of polymerization. But now, PhysicsWeb writes that a team of French physicists has discovered a law-breaking liquid that defies the rules. When you heat it between 45 and 75C, it becomes solid. But the process is fully reversible, and this is a world's premiere. When you decrease the temperature, this solid melts and turns again into a liquid. I'm not sure of the implications of such a phenomenon, but it's fascinating. Read more for essential details."
This is one of the things that makes you think if everything is as you know...
The Matrix anyone?
In other news:
Cookie dough batter turns to solid in oven when heated. (Yeah, yeah, it's not reversible...)
No references to Ice nine?! I must be getting old.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Fascinating stuff. This physics marvel of a liquid is a mixture of many separate elements... including milk, flour, eggs, sugar, and a pinch of salt.
The French have been freezing up when things get heated for years.
a bag of "Hot Cubes" to keep the coffee warm.
They have to be contrarians everywhere...
Hell has officially frozen over now.
For your mohawk?
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
I think I've been drinking this stuff out of the coffee pot in my office for several years now.
I'm laughing at clouds.
I can just imagine it now...
You go to Target to buy a 12-pack of "One-Time Use Thermometers."
Instructions: "When the temperature is between 45 and 75 degrees celcius, the liquid inside turns to a solid, shattering the glass! That's all there is to it!"
Failed freshmen chem did we?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
free speach
Did you mean: free speech
I vote for a new "Roland Piquepaille" section, he should get a good amount of advertisement revenue from his daily submits, always with "read more" links just quoting the original story.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Plazanet and colleagues prepared a liquid solution containing ?-cyclodextrine (?CD), water and 4-methylpyridine (4MP).
Is it edible?
Damn you hydrogen bonding, damn you shaking up our worlds with your heat freezing solids.
Putting it in someone's bloodstream would probably kill them ANYWAY - wouldn't cheaper poison be easier?
-insert a witty something-
Placing the solid into my fridge, and again forgetting it for say, 2 or 3 weeks, reduces the solid back into a liquid.
Though I havn't personally tried it, I'm fairly certain that if I were to return the liquid back to the oven, and again properly forget about it, that I would again get a solid.
I think that my girlfriend is comprised of this stuff. She seems to suddenly turn frigid as soon as things heat up...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Replace the nails and screws in the furniture in a hot classroom from the solid form of this material. Then just wait for the instructor to enter the room and turn on the AC.
Room cools, everything falls apart.
See, that's what I tried to tell the judge...
so next time I'm at the car dealership, I should inquire if the car comes with LSD, and if so, what sort of LSD it uses? I've been told to avoid the brown LSD.
"Body heat activated - when the temperature rises, it fuses your arms to your sides so that you can't release any bad armpit smells"
OK, I'm just spitballing here.
Perfectly Normal Industries
sex toys.
-
Can this stuff be used to line condems?
"I think that my girlfriend is comprised of this stuff. She seems to suddenly turn frigid as soon as things heat up..."
Maybe the problem you're not made of this stuff, and remain soft when things heat up.
I'd recommend some sort of radio-isotope clad in stainless steel. Self heating.
Plus if you hold your coffee cup between your legs in the car it could give your future children an opportunity for advantageous mutations. Of couse they could also turn out to be complete freaks but these days they're likely to turn out to be complete freaks anyhow so it is not like anyone would notice.
And if you expect me to tell you how this discovery will modify our lives, you're going to be disappointed. I've not a slightest idea about it, even if I find fascinating that scientists always find new ways to break rules and shake our certitudes.
What I see:
I am a chemist that has discovered a class of mixtures with a very interesting and heretofor unobserved property. I have published information on how to prepare these mixtures--in a way, it is a solution looking for a problem. I expect that given a small group of engineers, a dozen or so different applications could be hashed out over their morning coffee. I am disappointed--but not surprised--that a Slashdot reader couldn't be bothered to use his imagination to come up with an application, preferring to instead complain that no ideas were spoon-fed in the brief PhysicsWeb note.
~Idarubicin