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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.
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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.
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Search works now. Stay tuned for the voting feature.
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."
To my many friends, both known and unknown, wherever you may be, I submit these thoughts for your consideration. As this letter will make clear, Rudy Guiliani recently stated that freedom must be abolished in order for people to be more secure and comfortable. He said that with a straight face, without even cracking a smile or suppressing a giggle. He said it as if he meant it. That's scary, because his reason is not true reason. It does not seek the truth, but only addlepated answers, subhuman resolutions to conflicts. Yes, he may have some superficial charm, but Guiliani wants nothing less than to fight with spiritual weapons that are as refractory as they are pernicious, hence his repeated, almost hypnotic, insistence on the importance of his acrimonious revenge fantasies. Whenver he tries to fortify our feeble spirits with a few rehearsed words of bravado, I can't help but think that his occasional demonstrations of benevolence are not genuine. Nor are Guiliani's promises. In fact, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to detect the subtext of this letter. But just in case it's too subliminal for some, let me thrust it into your face right here: He is right about one thing, namely that fear is what motivates us. Fear of what it means when flagitious, inhumane ideologues promote group-think attitudes over individual insights. Fear of what it says about our society when we teach our children that there should be publicly financed centers of cynicism. And fear of pestilential, rapacious choleric-types like Guiliani who appropriate sacred symbols for crass purposes. Although grotty fogeys are relatively small in number compared to the general population, they are rapidly increasing in size and fervor. How dare Guiliani criticize my values when his are so obviously irrationalism-prone? Alas, he has been trying hard to protect what has become a lucrative racket for him. Unfortunately, that lucrative racket has a hard-to-overlook consequence: it will set the wolf to mind the sheep in the immediate years ahead.
Guiliani uses big words like "nondeterministic" to make himself sound important. For that matter, benevolent Nature has equipped another puny creature, the skunk, with a means of making itself seem important, too. Although Guiliani's notions may reek like a skunk, Guiliani's crusades are destructive. They're morally destructive, socially destructive -- even intellectually destructive. And, as if that weren't enough, Guiliani's method (or school, or ideology -- it is hard to know exactly what to call it) goes by the name of "Guiliani-ism". It is a phlegmatic and avowedly self-serving philosophy that aims to strap us down with a network of rules and regulations. Now, I hope Guiliani was joking when he implied he was going to impugn the patriotism of his opponents, but it sure didn't sound like it. He's more than malicious. Guiliani's mega-malicious. In fact, to understand just how malicious he is, you first need to realize that Guiliani contends that there's no difference between normal people like you and me and resentful, nit-picky common blood-stained criminals. Excuse me, but where exactly did this little factoid come from? On the surface, it would seem merely that I am confident that vulgar, hostile devotees of conspiracy theories will come to their own conclusions about all of these matters. But the truth is that he's a psychologically defective person. He's what the psychiatrists call a constitutional psychopath or a sociopath.
The academicism "debate" is not a debate. It is a harangue, a politically motivated, brilliantly publicized, larcenous attack on progressive ideas. It would be wrong to imply that Guiliani is involved in some kind of conspiracy to rob us of our lives, our health, our honor, and our belongings. It would be wrong because his insults are far beyond the conspiracy stage. Not only that, but he shouldn't pervert the course of justice. That's just plain common sense. Of course, the people who appreciate his expostulations are those who eagerly root up common sense, prominently hol
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.
Browsing on my DSL line and blowing off the network support line because cogentco seems to be having issues somewhere on the east coast.
To the Verizon tech that was in there working, please put the power cord you took from the running equipment in Cogent's cage back. Grab your coffee and walk to your damn truck and get your own. I'd like this to be done immediately so I can still leave work at 5:00pm EST.
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.
that "it's" is the contraction for "it is", and not the possessive of "it"?
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
I know it sux0rs, the r3sources that 1. Therefore it's JOiN THE GNAA!! you have a play and sold in the appeared...saying gone Romeo and A way to spend world. GNAA members
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
Usenet is 8oughly 'superior' machine.
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.
cycle; take a G00dbye...she had
sounds like Ice 9 to me
*
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"
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.
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 .
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