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?
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.
> “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 think this answer the HOW water is wet question not the WHY water is water question.
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?
I certainly don't know the answer to your question, but I believe you not only feel the difference in temperature, but also the fact that water is a better conductor of heat and will draw the heat from your body better than the air - and that difference in heat transfer is one of the things you "feel".
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.
These things are a bit of a fad where I live. There are two "float houses" within a few blocks of me. My girlfriend bought us a session in one last last year (she said she was "giving me nothing" for my birthday.)
You do feel the water, at least a bit. It might have been a little on the cold side, which didn't help the experience. I wasn't freezing to death or anything, but by the end was thinking, "Yeah, this could be half a degree warmer."
I didn't experience anything special. I meditate and whatnot and am pretty comfortable in the company of my own mind, so it was kind of like a long meditation session, though I never got in really deep. I was too busy watching myself for any novel reactions, I guess.
It lasted for an hour or ninety minutes and was pretty boring. My girlfriend reported a similar experience. YMMV, and you should try it and find out. It wasn't unpleasant, there just wasn't much there there (which is likely a commentary on the sterility of my mental environment or something.)
Which always surprises me. How is it that something as reactive as water, and as important as it is to our biology, that we don't have sensory mechanisms to locate it? It doesn't even have a smell.
>Can we actually feel wetness or only the temperature difference of wet vs dry?
In my experience if you put your hand in water with similar temperature to your hand it's hard to notice if there is any water there or you are just still touching air. You have to rule out other senses to make this work.
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.
"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."
The strength of hydrogen bonding in the original answer refers to the strength relative to other kinds of molecules. It is kind of implicit in the question that we are at room temperature, or more precisely a state where water is liquid.
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?
It's a blend of something that adheres to you but doesn't stick (easy to remove, or even let it evaporates), diffuses heat and toy with light (shines, magnify, refract...). All this makes wet wet.
> “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?