good news: it wouldn't be
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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Sounds like a lot less cleaning in the house as it would just evaporate in less than a minute?
High humidity tends to ruin a lot of houses/construction materials over time, but you'll likely first notice random spores
I mean you can just ventilate whenever you spill something.
The larger problem would be the entire water-based ecosystem.
We need xkcd to explain what would happen on a large scale if water was like this.
You could also clean it by putting a cloth in the lowest point it would run to so this sounds like a win to me
i think without surface tension it would also just fall out of the cloth as soon as you lift it, because nothing would wick against gravity. in fact of your floor is pourous at all, i reckon the water would just immediately all flow further down and you’d be left with a dry floor.
Oil doesn’t have surface tension and it stays in the cloth. At a certain point it’s not surface tension that keeps liquids together but friction.
Says my uneducated ass.
oils have low surface tension, i believe a true no-surface tension liquid is as impossible as a true frictionless surface.
i didn’t consider friction though! i think the rag would still dry out completely pretty quick, but you might have a few seconds while the water falls out depending on how tight the mesh is?
i dunno, this is a real whacky thing to think about!
Without surface tension it would stick to whatever thing attracts it more. And a normal piece of cloth attracts water way more than a normal non-carpet floor.
But it also wouldn't flow freely as the GP expects either. Some oils have almost no surface tension, and they are famously a nightmare to clean up.
As a positive, the water would evaporate faster.
the cloth attracts it because of the capillary action pulling water into the gaps therein, and capillary action relies on surface tension! i think without outside forces like suction, the liquid in this scenario would never flow against gravity.
i think hahah
Surface tension doesn't tell you anything about the cloth-water interface.
i mean it’s literally why liquids wick into cloth
Wouldn't it evaporate in like 5 seconds, then? Also, drainage would be the easiest thing ever. Don't even need a slanted floor.
That'd be awful. You want the stuff in water out of your house, not precipitated all over the floor.
What stuff in water? Are you referring to drainage?
Minerals, dirt, pathogens, etc.
If you wash your ~~ear~~ raw chicken (you shouldn't), that splatter would be much more evenly spread over every surface it lands on.
Well yeah, I'm not advocating we convert to surface-tensionless water, here. I'm just pointing out the flaw in this meme's logic.
Now on to serious questions, wtf is an ear chicken?
Auto correct from raw? Otherwise, god help us.
Yes, I will correct.
Your floor would have to be supernaturally flat and level for that to happen.
the world is crooked ! reality is a lie !
Lambs to the cosmic slaughter!
ah yes ! that's the one
We would probably just not exist as liquids that want to hold together are pretty essential. Even if you just imagine blood not leaving your body through the tiniest nick.
I mean maybe? Surface tension play a role in blood staying on the wound, but it’s the blood itself that clots. I think the bigger issue would be your eyes, but maybe evolution creates a light sensor that wasn’t developed underwater…
I’m at a loss. In my heart of hearts I know we all die if water doesn’t tend to hold together, but I can’t think of WHY. Call xkcd.
But that 2 micron puddle would also evaporate in 2 microseconds!
Wouldn’t it just be a superfluid at that point? Those things are ungovernable. We’d have way more problems that just spilled puddles. They crawl out of the beakers on their own. It’d be an absolute nightmare.
My bad superfluids are 0 viscosity not surface tension carry on we’re safe.
"Everything is coated with a fine layer of shit." https://yourwildlife.org/2014/07/the-tip-of-the-gutberg-the-worlds-first-map-of-the-patina-of-feces/
Probably our bodies would instantly collapse into ooze like that guy in the first X-Men.
Would capillary action still work, or does it depend on surface tension? I'm thinking about superfluids. Would the water stop at covering the floor?
You can try it yourself by adding a drop of dish soap to some water. Capillary action would still work and the water would evaporate long before covering the entire floor.
Capillary rise depends on surface tension, gamma. If surface tension was 0, there would be no capillary rise. Soap decreases surface tension, but it's not 0.
Oh nevermind then. I just looked it up and came across the so-called Rollin film. I don't know if that only appears in helium or if superfluid water would be subject to that effect as well. I wonder how that would impact its behaviour.
That's how water works in videogames
🤔
Water just doesn't work in minecraft
🤔
What if each H~2~O molecule was coated in a hydrophobic substance?