this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
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[–] spiffpitt@lemmy.world 159 points 1 week ago (1 children)

wouldn't this evaporate extremely quick though?

[–] Signtist@bookwyr.me 84 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, I'll often spread spilled water across the table just so that it evaporates within a couple minutes.

[–] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 22 points 1 week ago

Must be nice living somewhere dry. I’d just end up with a moldy table a day later.

[–] LostXOR@fedia.io 141 points 1 week ago (3 children)

For a liquid to be a liquid, rather than a gas, it needs to be held together by intermolecular forces. Which means it will have some amount of surface tension. I therefore dismiss this hypothetical as physically unrealistic! :P

[–] _stranger_@lemmy.world 56 points 1 week ago (5 children)

supercritical helium does some really weird shit, I'd call this one plausible.

[–] LostXOR@fedia.io 38 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Supercritical fluids are more like a gas than a liquid. Their lack of surface tension means they'll diffuse throughout whatever container you put them in, so they can't really be "poured" like a liquid can. They're actually a pretty good example of why liquids need surface tension to be liquid.

[–] _stranger_@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

that's a pretty good point, it's literally trapped between being a liquid and a gas. If this was BattleBots, they'd let it compete once and then ban it.

[–] thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

"Trapped between liquid and gas" is kind of the opposite of what a supercritical fluid is. It's more that gas and liquid states are "trapped" in a region of phase space, while supercritical fluids exist in the place where the demarcation between the two no longer exists (which is usually a far larger region than where it does).

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[–] zout@fedia.io 10 points 1 week ago

Superfluid. It can be supercritical, but superfluid is the special thing for helium.

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[–] Derpenheim@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 week ago

Unless its a hydrocarbon product, which can (and does) spread over surfaces it can't mix with/soak into in single molecules thick sheets.

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[–] lemmy_outta_here@lemmy.world 43 points 1 week ago (1 children)

at least it wouldn’t wet your socks. i think capillary action relies on surface tension

[–] thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 39 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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- 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
[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

life on earth would cease to exist quite quickly

This was the first thought that came to my mind on seeing this post.

For starters, basicaly most (all?) land based plants are fucked, they can no longer internally hydrate, also water in soil behaves totally differently, so ...yeah.

(oh on that note, snap your fingers and water has 0 surface tension? time for a lot of landslides/sinkholes in humid areas)

Then you've got beings with active circulatory systems, who... may to some extent be able to live, but lots of pulmonary / circulatory problems are gonna happen.

I guess maybe totally waterborne life could survive, maybe... but 0 surface tension of water probably changes how salinity works...

Yeah, this would be very bad, lol.

[–] thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

If we want to go to extremes, zero surface tension means no nucleation barrier for critical bubbles. In practice, this implies that liquid water is unstable, and will spontaneously vaporise at all conditions.

So yeah, all life ends pretty quickly.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 days ago

Wow, that's much worse lol!

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 54 points 1 week ago

life on earth would cease to exist quite quickly

your socks would remain dry

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (9 children)

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.

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[–] MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown@fedia.io 29 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Bold of you to assume my floor is level.

[–] Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 week ago

Not only that, but level with 2 micrometers tolerance is something only specialized CNC milling workbenches achieve

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[–] Scott_of_the_Arctic@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] kamen@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

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...

[–] yucandu@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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?

[–] OddMinus1@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 week ago

It would instead instantly make it extremely obvious how uneven my floor is.

[–] don@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

At 2 micrometers, it’s going to evaporate too fast for there to be a ~~puddle~~ thin film of water.

Oh! The humidity!

[–] JaymesRS@piefed.world 20 points 1 week ago (3 children)

This reminds me of the person that suggested in a response to a request for ADHD “life-hacks” where they would wet one of their socks before starting a specific high-importance task and could not take it off until the specified task was completed.

[–] EldenLord@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

I see, quite similar to the ol’ light-your-hair-on-fire-to-motivate-yourself-to-shower trick. Clever!

[–] Ruthalas 11 points 1 week ago

That is a weapons-grade life hack right there.

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[–] BedInspector@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago

Well if water didn't have its unique properties of cohesion and adhesion we likely wouldn't be here anyways.

[–] betahack@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

look....I'm just glad roaches don't have sharp teeth and spiders can't fly.

let's stop while we're ahead

[–] EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

[–] jjfolken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 week ago

Let's stop ~~while we're ahead~~

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[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 1 week ago

The water would react similarly to alcohol. Yes, the puddle would be bigger but it would evaporate faster.

[–] ramenshaman@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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

[–] CannedYeet@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You can add a wetting agent to water to decrease the surface tension

[–] Robin@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I read that in Meatwad’s voice.

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[–] Lupus@feddit.org 9 points 1 week ago

Did someone say oxygen not included?

[–] Zwrt@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Can we make liquids like that? Sounds useful in some situations.

[–] ornery_chemist@mander.xyz 15 points 1 week ago

Yes and no. No surface tension implies vanishing intermolecular forces, so the liquid would not be cohesive and would expand in all directions to the volume of the room... which is pretty much the definition of a gas. Not quite though: supercritical fluids also do this as long as temperature and pressure remain high enough, and are indeed useful in niche applications industrially.

[–] SonOfAntenora@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Liquid with low to none surface tension? Relatively possivle, tensioactives and additives within soaps and washing up liquids can do that.

And lakes affected by this are biologically damaged or dead, as surface tension is essntial to life.

Edit: that line is something they would absolutely add to an ATHF episode, but the consequences would be absurd as usual.

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[–] Almacca@aussie.zone 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Now think about what would happen if ice didn't float.

[–] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I'm not a geologist, but I'm imagine that the deep ocean would be a colossal underwater glacier, with intermixed sedimentary layers. Kind of like what we have with methane hydrate deposits, only much, much deeper. The super-deep ocean simply wouldn't exist, and we might not even know about the Mariana Trench, or a lot of other sea floor features. Also, it's possible a different proportion of the world's water would be frozen in this way.

With ice as a part of the sea floor, it would also interact with subduction zones at continental edges. That might push a LOT more superheated water into volcanoes, faults, and everywhere else water could go. That would probably make for a lot more geysers in such areas, and volcanic eruptions would be far more energetic.

The trajectory of human history and technology would also be changed. There might have been fewer ice bridges between continents during the last ice age. Ice-skating wouldn't become as common a thing until we get refrigeration. Harvesting ice in the winter would require bodies of water to freeze solid first, making it impractical except in shallow areas.

I'm also going to wager that glaciers would behave differently too. I don't know enough about their dynamics, but I wonder if having meltwater on the bottom helps lubricate their movements somewhat. Kind of like a lava flow, only slower. Inverting that relationship might make glaciers far less mobile.

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[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 week ago

We're 60% water and not really water-tight as it is.

[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Only Rick Sanchez can make a floor that level, and then only 1 square meter.

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[–] jaileh@jlai.lu 6 points 1 week ago

I love this comment section

[–] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Would that mean that if you jumped into the Atlantic you'd just fall to the bottom? Or would that be due to buoyancy or something

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