• ramenshaman@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 months 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 it

    • thebestaquaman@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      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
      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        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
          0·
          2 months ago

          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.

    • Signtist@bookwyr.meEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

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

  • Eager Eagle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • theUwUhugger@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      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

  • JaymesRS@piefed.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • Almacca@aussie.zoneEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Yeah, not good. It’s kind of a weird quirk of nature that water is pretty unique in that it gets less dense when it’s a solid as well.

      • pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        0·
        2 months ago

        Hmm, might small bodies of water, say pusdle to pond size, still freeze from the top down because of exposure to colder air and above freezing earth? If the top freezes over all at once it might stay on top unless something breaks it and allows water to flow from under to over

    • suodrazah@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      The floor couldn’t be level, it would have to have a spherical diameter equal to the distance of your floor to the centre mass of the Earth.

  • BedInspector@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 months ago

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

  • don@lemmy.ca
    0·
    2 months ago

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

  • yucandu@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 months ago

    That’s how gasoline spills (on water) work. They cover the water about one molecule thick.