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Thin Water Acts Like a Solid
Roland Piquepaille writes "What happens when you compress water in a nano-sized space? According to Georgia Tech physicists, water starts to behave like a solid. "The confined water film behaves like a solid in the vertical direction by forming layers parallel to the confining surface, while maintaining it's liquidity in the horizontal direction where it can flow out," said one of the researchers. "Water is a wonderful lubricant, but it flows too easily for many applications. At the one nanometer scale, water is a viscous fluid and could be a much better lubricant," added another one."
Isn't this probably just the pressure part of the equation acting out a little?
Well, based on poor results getting it on in a swimmin pool, I can verify that water is a lousy lubricant at normal scale!
Here's an microscope http://www.dbi.udel.edu/bioimaging/afm.html. On behalf of everybody on slashdot, we're going to use atomic force. In deference to your occasional useful post, we're going to allow you a thin layer of water as a lubricant.
But cold water also acts like a solid at times.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
This should be obvious since we know that you can cut things with a slim jet of water going out at high pressure.
Canadians and those from other northen countries let out an audible "DUH!" when reading a Slashdot article that stated that solid water is slippery. Speed skaters everywhere found rolling on the floor in hystarics.
more at 6:00
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
...it's called prison lube.
What I want to know is: can the layers be manipulated individually? If so, then that shows promise for nano-scale, water-based logic circuitry. Such "circuitry" could continue to function in the event of severe EMP event, such as in a nuclear attack. Promising.
If it is hydrophobic, what we see may actually be the effect of lost entropy due to rearrangement of water molecules, rather than compression.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
There's actually alot of evidence in the literature suggesting that water forms a "structured layer" on hydrophillic (water-compatible) surfaces, and around hydrophillic objects dispersed in water. For instance the mobility of water that structures around proteins has been described in the literature as "ice-like." These measurements are typically based on the density of the water or using things like conductivity to infer mobility.
So the notion of water forming solid-like structures near surfaces is not entirely new. However, direct mechanical measurements of the mobility/viscosity of those last few atomic layers of water are not easy, so this paper certainly adds a valuable contribution to the field.
The actual scientific paper in question can be found here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.75.115415
From what I can tell, F@H touched on this a while ago. I was reading the PS3 F@H articles, browsing through the "what good does F@H do?" and the "F@H is just a feel-good project" comments and looking at the results page when I stumbled across the above PDF and thought "Hey, that looks like something slashdot just reported on."
I guess that's what the plumber downstairs had in mind when trying to unblock a clog with water that shot straight up the common wall pipe and out of my kitchen sink to flood the floor.
Alright, you know, if you had asked me this question, way back when, I would have said it acts like a solid. Why is this news, am I missing something?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
They said lubricant, horizontal, AND viscous! Excellent.
"water is a wonderful lubricant" ok i'll remember that next time i'm with my girlfriend :P
Now here's one iPoddy site! iPod Range
See "electrohydrodynamic"; though the effect may only be momentary, it might be devastating to whatever "state" such a device's "components" would be in at that moment...
IANASBIPOOTV???
Ok, I'll bite. You're not a Super-Brilliant, Innovative Person Occasionaly On TeleVision?
Much Madness is divinest Sense --
To a discerning Eye --
Much Sense -- the starkest Madness
Is your "girlfriend" a water-bottle?
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
How about just outside the Gatlinburg museum's entrance, visitors can see a 5-ton solid granite ball floating and spinning on 1/264 of an inch of pressurized water. Visitors may put their hands on the 4-foot diameter ball and spin it in another direction. Or the Merchant Family Memorial (Ripley's Believe It or Not Ball).
If you have ever gotten laid, like me - you would know that waterbased lubricants are great for carnal pleasures. Just watch Talk Sex with that canadian chick on the show. She's always babbling about how waterbased lubricants are the way to go. They help a lot. They prevent a condom from tearing, and they should be used if you're going in 'the other door'.
Back on topic, will this 'discovery' in nanobased water lubricant be functional in almost all applications? I mean, you can't use this in a system that will cause a lot of friction, as that will cause the water to expand and simply break due to no lubrication. It looks like this can only be applied on systems that do no cause heat buildup.
WE use petroleum based lubricants because they can take the heat much better than water can.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
I can't believe the popular notions of water in a nano-sized channel are false! Soon they'll be saying that the attorney general acts like a solid under pressure in a nano-sized tube. If we can't believe the popular notions of nano-tube water behavior, what can we believe? My life is a lie!
An element acting like a solid!! Whoever would have thought it?
Someone should have saved them some time and just told them to pop it in the freezer :P
Why is its the only non apostrophized possessive? Strictly adhering to antiquated rules that make no sense kills the natural progression of language
Density and viscosity are the primary factors when choosing a lubricant. Water happens to have a pretty low viscosity. The point of article is that the effective viscosity increases by several orders of magnitude in truely thin sheets and takes an ordered form like a solid in one direction but not the others, not that thicker films of water can be used as a lubricant. In fact, they found that as the gap gets down to a nanometer, it becomes a less effective lubricant.
I started typing this and thought to myself, "Something about the way that submission is written and how it misses the point of the article smells of Roland Piquepaille."
I wasn't at all surprised when I went back and checked the author to see his name and standard question-link-quote writing format.
Now I'm curious because the pressure they apply seems to be of interest here. I'm curious if 3 dimensional order appears under high isotropic pressures. If so, I'd expect this to be possible in larger volumes with sufficient pressure, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the viscosity increased, too.
No possessive pronoun has an apostrophe: My, our, your, his, her, its, their.
His, hers, ours, theirs - there aren't apostrophes in any possessive pronouns.
It's not the only one.
My, mine, your, yours, his, hers, theirs, our, and ours come to mind. None of the posessive pronouns take an apostrophe.
If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.
I don't know, but I'll try to answer _your_ question with _my_ answer.
sounds like Ice 9 to me
*
What do you mean by "the only non apostrophized possessive"? There are also his, her, and their - I am pretty sure he's she's and they's are not possessive...
I think he has hi's possessives right.
rj
Never have I ever heard such utter rubbish. These people really should get out more and get a grip on reality.
In Arthur C. Clarke's book "The City and the Stars" later re-released as 'Against the fall of Night", it mentions a slidewalk which was a solid in one dimension but a liquid in the other two. That way, you could walk onto the middle portion and be carried along by the "current" while standing. Still what do expect from a civilization a billion or two years in the future?
Grew up on his science fiction and fact books; "The Promise of Space" was seminal to my interest in space. Unfortunately his (alleged) personal discretions have cast a serious shadow over his legacy.
"At the one nanometer scale, water is a viscous fluid and could be a much better lubricant," added another one.""
Oh good I was wondering when KY could finally enter into the water market.
"It's better to be a pirate then join the Navy"
Point taken. I still think it's strange that the apostrophe is used in marking the possessive for all nouns except the pronouns. It was an arbitrary decision some guy made one day, with no real sensible basis, so the user confusion is more than understandable. From what I have seen on wikipedia, even top scholars still disagree on apostrophe usage.
I think the bigger issue is that the apostrophe is used to mark omissions and possessiveness. I would be happier if things that sounded the same looked the same on paper. More than phonetics, it should go for punctuation as well.
I agree completely - it's hard enough learning all the inconsistencies as a native speaker; I'd hate trying to learn English as a second language.
Turns out some guy in the middle east figured this out a couple of millennia ago. They called him the Nazarene or something; apparently even did some tricks where he walked on the stuff. Once again, slashdot is just recycling old news.
Not just old, but ancient news. Jesus showed that effect almost two millennia ago. :p
Carbon based humanoid in training.
Actually, there is a good, if obscure reason.
:)
When you add an apostrophe s to the end of a noun, you're creating a contraction of the noun and the possessive pronoun. At least that was the intention when the rule was invented
gnrcman's is a contraction of "grncman his", girl's is a contraction of "girl hers"
So if you were to put the apostrophe in "its" the contraction would be "it its", which is really a bit recursive.
Thank you. Spelling matters.
The properties of liquids in bulk have been known to be considerably different than otherwise restricted states (films on surfaces, surface of bulk, capillary properties, adsorbed liquids, etc.) Water is strongly affected due to strong hydrogen bonding in addition to dipole forces. So what's new here?
Be heard || Be herd
Waterhose Water is a solid too, in your face. Or when It's coming at your flying saucer de-compressing from 4,361 psi >>> http://www.newpath4.com/enginewow.htm .
(I want my MTV)
(You want your MTV)
(He wants his MTV)
(She wants her MTV)
(It wants its MTV)
(We want our MTV)
(They want their MTV)
The pattern of there being no apostrophes among possessive pronouns seems pretty regular to me. It makes a reasonable amount of sense as well. These are all very frequently used words and thus (as you might expect) are all irregular forms. Thus, the operation of forming the possessive (an adjective) from the noun is not a mechanical "add apostrophe 's'" process. (It's my observation that frequently used things in language get more attention and therefore are more likely to get "customized".)
Thin water. Soon to be all the rage of nutty health food people who claim to be so smart, yet are stupid enough to shell out $2.50 for something that is less healthful than water they can get for free.
:-)
THIN WATER! BUY IT! BUY IT NOW! YOU WANT IT! DO IT! DO IT NOW!
Science project, or clever marketing campaign?
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
This was a pretty obvious conclusion. If you compress water (or anything), then you reduce the amount of space that molecules have to move around. When you compress it to the point that the water molecules are only allowed to vibrate in the same amount of space that they do in a solid, then you have, in effect, created a solid. Even though water molecules are in a crystal lattice when they are in a solid state, they still vibrate.
If you compress liquid water to a density of 0.92 g/cm, then it is no suprise that it will act like a solid. It's like same a saying that nitrogen acts like a liquid when it is compressed.
For example, in a cigarette lighter, liquid butane acts like a liquid because it is compressed to the point where the pressure of the gas has reached a density of 0.584 g/cm3, therefore allowing most of the liquid butane to remain liquid above its boiling point. Some of the liquid will revaporize inside the gas compartment until the pressure within the gas compartment is high enough to keep the remaining liquid at or above the minimum liquid density threshold.
So, if you wer to take a liquid gas, and compress it even further, then you would continue to reduce the volume in which the liquid's component molecules has in which to move. Compress it far enough and the molecules will eventusally cease movement (with the exception of the inherent vibrations of any atom or molecule at temperatures above 0K). Viola! A solid.
I'd have to say that for smart people, you'd think that they should have been able to figure this out pretty easily on their own.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Each of our cells are huge nanoscale factories that use water as lubricant. What these scientists are doing is reinventing the wheel.
...water is a viscous fluid and could work as a lubricant. Gee. Ya think? I wonder if that's why most living things on Earth are made of... wait for it... WATER! Duh!!! Now let me get back to my project to create snapshot backups of the quantum structure of the universe for disaster recovery before the boss... er... wife gets back. Geez, someone told me Slashdot was the place for geeks. You guys are bush league. - Magrathean Planet Builder
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Stuff like this is what "nano" is actually about. These guys are probing a layer of water so thin that it is almost all surface, so it doesn't exhibit water's "bulk" behavior.
Think of it this way: In bulk liquid form, almost every molecule of water is surrounded by other water molecules, like in a glass of water. But, if you create a layer of water so thin that most of the molecules do not neighbor water molecules, and instead neighbor other things like a surface or their "tip," new behaviors can be observed.
Similarly unexpected behaviors pop up in tons of other chemical systems in situations like these. Nanoscience is all about figuring out how they work (and ultimately expected to lead to new technologies).
I know I'm being sarcastic and sophomoric, here, but jesus. Why is it news to anyone, especially scientists, that if you compress a liquid as far as it'll compress it won't compress any more? I mean, this is a scientific "breakthrough" Yogi Berra could have told you.
Otherwise I might try high diving into a glass of water only a few nanometers deep
You can't really use the word "except", because pronouns aren't nouns.
Further, it's not all that arbitrary. Every posessive noun in English has an omission that the apostrophe marks. Old english gentives had -es appended to the end, but that adds an extra syllable. Laziness and time saw the pronunciation migrate to -s.
I believe that use of -'s is superior to -es because it better reflects the actual pronunciation, and that it is better than -s because it clearly distinguishes posessives from plurals in writing, though I know you disagree with the second point.
I call absolute bullshit on this, unless you have a link to back it up. I poked around etymology sites a while and didn't come up with anything too conclusive. If I had to guess, I'd say that English just got this from the Vikings, as old (and new) Scandinavian languages used "s" (without the apostrophe) to denote possession.
Of course this is only a guess, as I suspect your statement is too.
Nope...not just a guess. I learned it in a college course some time back, and so I don't have the original citation, however, I did some digging and did find at least one reference to prove I didn't pull this out of thin air:
t ml
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O29-APOSTROPHE.h
It's rather poorly formated, but here's the relevant passage:
Scholars have generally regarded this use of the apostrophe as arising from the omission of the letter e in Old and Middle English -es GENITIVE singular endings (such as mannes man's, scipes ship's), spreading in due course to all genitives, with or without an e and plural as well as singular. Others have cited a noun-and-pronoun pattern of possession common in the 16-17c, as in Charles his name, where noun and pronoun came together as Charles's name and then spread to all possessives, male or female, singular or plural. However, it is the Old English inflection that more directly accounts for the use of the apostrophe in Modern English.
According to that, the more direct origin was the omission of the letter e in old and middle english, but my explanation *is* another possible contributing factor. So no, I wasn't just guessing or making shit up.