wouldn’t this evaporate extremely quick though?
at least it wouldn’t wet your socks. i think capillary action relies on surface tension
It relies on differences in surface tension. If a liquid has a lower surface tension (energy) towards one surface than another, you get the typical capillary effect. In the case of water, the water-air energy is lower than the water-<whatever your capillary is made of> energy, so you get a capillary effect.
If water had exactly zero surface tension against every interface,
- it would not exhibit any capillary action
- life on earth would cease to exist quite quickly
- your socks would remain dry
life on earth would cease to exist quite quickly
your socks would remain dry
It’d evaporate much quicker TBF. Although that also means that the BP would be much lower and tea and coffee wouldn’t be a thing and boiling wouldn’t be a reliable method of cooking. although on the flip side, you could increase the strength of alcoholic beverages by boiling the water off instead of distilling the alcohol.
Yep. Generally if one property of it was so different, I’d expect many others to be different as a result of that too. So physics and chemistry as we know them (with so many things relying on water) wouldn’t exist. And thinking further how life on Earth started off in the water…
It would instead instantly make it extremely obvious how uneven my floor is.
That’s how gasoline spills (on water) work. They cover the water about one molecule thick.
So you’re saying my floor needs to be water?
I think that’s part of our anthropic bias, not sure we’d be alive without water’s surface tension in order to observe this.
Well cells wouldn’t be circle shaped, but would it actually be to the detriment of life in that or other ways?
Maybe cells could take a more pragmatic shape, like tactical dicks
I think that could make some life-supporting chemical reactions difficult to happen, but I’m not qualified to judge that.
I don’t, not that I am qualified to say so either! The larger surface area might be beneficial for osmosis!
I’m also not qualified, but I do wonder whether releasing all that surface tension inside us would alleviate a lot of anxiety. I think yes.
Trees wouldn’t exist, so life would definitely look different.
What are you on about?
Capillary action doesn’t happen without surface tension, so long stemmed woody plants are out. Iirc, mushrooms were not super common before trees and spread by decomposing them, so those are gone too
At 2 micrometers, it’s going to evaporate too fast for there to be a
puddlethin film of water.Well if water didn’t have its unique properties of cohesion and adhesion we likely wouldn’t be here anyways.
The water would react similarly to alcohol. Yes, the puddle would be bigger but it would evaporate faster.
look…I’m just glad roaches don’t have sharp teeth and spiders can’t fly.
let’s stop while we’re ahead
When some spiders are born, sometimes hundreds at a time, they cast little parachute webs and ride the wind to wherever they might go.
Palmetto bugs are like mean flying roaches that bite.
You’ll never escape the horrors of the beauty in nature.
“Palmetto bugs” are just roaches, period. That name refers to either the Florida woods cockroach or the American cockroach.
That would actually be a very useful tool for machinists. I think it would make it much easier to find out how non-flat something is
You can add a wetting agent to water to decrease the surface tension
wetter water
I know a guy who drank some WaterWetter and got pretty sick. He was an idiot.
I read that in Meatwad’s voice.
made me reread it
Only Rick Sanchez can make a floor that level, and then only 1 square meter.
Season 8 is really good so far. They’re taking the stories in a new direction that I really like. I think Justin Roiland leaving might have actually been a positive for the writing.
if we lived in a high pressure environment, this totally would happen.
