
Why Water Is Wet - antigizmo
http://nautil.us/issue/25/water/ingenious-richard-saykally
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dj-wonk
There are interesting parts to the article, but the headline doesn't do it
justice.

> “Daddy? Why is water wet?” And the proper answer is: strong tetrahedral
> hydrogen bonding, which they then related to their teachers for years
> afterward whenever the subject of water came, they’d say, “Strong
> tetrahedral hydrogen bonding!” But that’s the correct answer. That’s what
> makes water wet.

I've got a simpler answer. The Apple dictionary defines the word "wet" as
"covered or saturated with water or another liquid". By that definition, if
someone were to ask, "Why is water wet?" the response would simply be "because
it is water".

Another way to ask the question is "What about water gives it interesting
properties?"

By the title, I was hoping to see some interesting definition of "wet" in the
article but did not. It might as well ask "Why is water water?"

I'd also be interested in a unpacking how "wetness" works in terms of lower
principles, across different liquids. To what degree do all liquids behave
like water? Why or why not?

~~~
alejohausner
The word "wet" is a technical term. If you spray a water repellent like
Scotchgard on your clothes, they will become hydrophobic, and water won't
cling to the cloth, nor penetrate its surface. In other words, hydrophobic
materials are hard to wet. Waxy surfaces are also hard to wet. See "wetting"
on wikipedia (not to be confused with nocturnal enuresis ;-).

Wetting is a verb. Maybe the title should have read "Daddy? Why does water
wet?" That might have resolved the confusion, at the risk of angering
grammatical pedants.

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chrisbennet
Here is something I've wondered about for a few years: Can we actually _feel_
wetness or only the temperature difference of wet vs dry? In other words, if
the water, air and skin temp were the same, could you feel what part of your
hand was in water?

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jisaacks
I forget what they are called, but I have heard of places that immerse you in
total darkness and total silence and have you float in water that is the same
as your skins temperature so that you feel like you are floating in
nothingness. I never went but want to try it sometime. So I cannot say if it
works or not but at least according to these places you would not feel the
water. I wish I could remember what they were called. We have one here in
Atlanta.

EDIT: found it based on SCHiM's comment: [http://flo2s.com/floating/what-is-a-
float-tank/](http://flo2s.com/floating/what-is-a-float-tank/)

~~~
modoc
I've always heard them called sensory deprivation chambers.

~~~
icebraining
That's the name I knew them by (mostly from watching Altered States), but
apparently they're now called isolation tanks:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_tank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_tank)

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dnautics
Strangely, my answer would have been "weakly tetrahedral hydrogen bonding"
when water has a regular tetrahedral lattice, it's ice. It's when there are
disruptions to the lattice that things are more interesting.

~~~
arbitrage
The professor disagrees with you:

"When water freezes into ordinary ice, which is the kind that makes the ice
cubes that float in our highballs, this happens at what we would call zero
degrees centigrade, at atmospheric pressure. When water freezes into ice it
creates a very open structure. That form of ice comprises arrays of six
membered rings that are stacked on top of one another to make channels and
most of that ice is actually empty space."

~~~
moron4hire
How is that disagreement?

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beobab
Best answer I ever heard was "because it's sticky".

~~~
alejohausner
Nice idea, but I doesn't really do justice to wetting, I think. First of all,
water doesn't stick to everything: some materials are hydrophobic, and as
Saykally points out, it's that dual ability to attract some parts of molecules
and repel others that makes water necessary for life on Earth. That's how cell
membranes form spontaneously: long skinny lipid molecules gather into sheets
with their hydrophilic ends facing out towards water and their hydrophobic
ends facing inward.

Second, all viscous fluids are sticky, in the sense that their flow is slowed
where they touch stationary surfaces. This boundary phenomenon is responsible
for the Coanda effect. Have you ever touched a spoon to the stream of water
coming out of the kitchen tap, and watched the water change course _towards_
the spoon?

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agumonkey
An interesting class of question. Wet, solid, warm. Basically any regular yet
fuzzy sensation we have.

Last question, why is blue blue.

