Slashdot Mirror
'Floating Bridge' Property of Water Found
eldavojohn writes "When exposed to high voltage, water does some interesting things. From the article, 'water in two beakers climbs out of the beakers and crosses empty space to meet, forming the water bridge. The liquid bridge, hovering in space, appears to the human eye to defy gravity. Upon investigating the phenomenon, the scientists found that water was being transported from one beaker to another, usually from the anode beaker to the cathode beaker. The cylindrical water bridge, with a diameter of 1-3 mm, could remain intact when the beakers were pulled apart at a distance of up to 25 mm.'"
Now we can build 25mm bridges to nowhere!! fp?
Like a bridge *entirely *composed *of troubled water...?
and it makes me wonder.. where they talk about the changes in water density.
IF you could find a way to change the density of water within living cells-- decrease slowly, and increase rapidly...
by oh say, 10% or more from standard...
When you decrease slowly, then cellular walls could expand to accomodate the increased volume without bursting...
now your return the density to normal (if necassary).. and before the cells recover- you freeze the cells-- and the expansion of the frozen water does not cause massive gross cellular damage.
now cyronics is much more achievable.. (of course, the voltages described do not seem condusive to application to living flesh,, but perhaps another method could be found for the same effect...)
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
So raise your hand if you think that was a Russian water-tentacle.
I predict we'll be seeing homeopathic "medicine" made out of this magick water within a few weeks.
We know your tricks, Jesus. You were generating large amounts of voltage through each of your legs. It's only a matter of time before we figure the other ones out!
...so you don't have to cope with skeptical people.
- What you said that is?
- A water bridge.
- That's bullshit.
- It's true. The water is floating between the beakers.
- Oh, really? Then I guess it's okay for me to touch to confirm it, right?
- I don't recommend that.
- I knew it. You're so full of shit.
- Okay, touch it if you want. But I wouldn't do that.
- *laughs* Yeah, I'll just touch this "water bridge" and we can't move on with our... AAHHH!!!
- *increases voltage gradually* That's for calling me a liar. Asshole.
And to make things worse :-) it can be formed in a large number of types of ice, not only one type. Which type depends on the pressure involved. (I don't have the exact figure about how many types of ice that exists, but I think it's at least eight.) Some types of ice has a higher density than the liquid form of water while other as we are familiar with has a lower which results in the fact that ice floats. If ice hadn't been able to float life as we know it wouldn't have formed, or at least the oceans would be a lot different since the bottom would be covered in ice.
Depending on the temperature and pressure water can change state from solid to gas or vice versa without going to the liquid phase. There is also at least one point at which the properties that separates the gas form and the liquid form ceases to have a meaning and a fourth state is entered. If I remember it correctly it appears at a temperature of about 340 degrees C. (I may be wrong)
And even if we don't think about it as such water is actually one of the best solvents around. More often we think about some petrol or alcohol when we are saying solvent, but water is also our friend here. The reason why water and oil doesn't mix is because water is a polar molecule with a positive and a negative side while the molecules oil is built on are electrically neutral. An intermediate here are alcohols (a few of them drinkable, but most of them not - or only once) where one end of the molecule is electrically neutral and friend with oil while the other is polarized and water-friendly. This means that alcohols can be used when you want to mix water and oil. In some cases it is possible to create an emulsion of water and oil too, and one of the most common is mayonnaise (which most people has been in contact with).
Sometimes the term heavy water is making it's way through the news. It is actually ordinary water - chemically speaking - which means that there is no problem if you should drink it - except that it's rather expensive. The difference is that one or both of the hydrogen atoms in the molecule has an extra neutron or two. These forms are called deuterium or tritium. The extra neutron involved means that the atoms can be fused with each other to create helium. It is possible to fuse plain hydrogen atoms too, but the amount of energy needed is much larger and not precisely what can be done in a normal lab.
At least two cases has been in movies or TV series that I know of that refers to heavy water and special properties (neither of them plausible) and the first was a humor series involving English POW:s in a German camp where they were trying to seed the idea of the wonder properties of heavy water when it comes to hair growth to a bald German. The second was that it could be used to cure cancer. (don't believe either)
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I have a vague memory that in one episode of MacGyver, the hero did something like this to redirect water from the corrupt landowner's property to nearby drought-stricken peasant's fields. He used a car battery initially to get the voltage required to create the water bridge. But when the car battery started to die, he used the water to drive a small generator (made from an empty Wite-Out bottle, some fuse wire and scuba diver flippers) that produced the electricity to keep the water bridge going. It was a great episode, even if the perpetual-motion machine was a bit far fetched.
Why, an endless stack of turtles, of course...
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
I find it scary that someone actually found that informative.