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Dry Water

en.wikipedia.org

81–90 of 192 posts

Re: Dry Water

#81
My understanding is that to produce dry water all you need is a fine enough super-hydrophobic substance. It doesn't have to be silica but we know how to produce hydrophobic silica nano-particles.

The main property it has over traditional water is an increased water-gas interface which means it can absorb more gases and absorb them at a faster rate.

Re: Dry Water

#82
post #27

Apparently one can make dry water with a blender - mix fine silica powder and water in a 1:19 ratio (by mass) and put it in a blender for a few minutes. I'm not going to risk my blender to try it, so who's first?

Blenders can be replaced. I would worry more about silicosis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicosis

Or pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. Been waiting for 25 years to use that word seriously. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilico...

Re: Dry Water

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very interesting, especially considering that patents were originally created to incentivize people to publish details of inventions so they could be publicly known and accessible in perpetuity. To better uphold their original purpose, perhaps the patent rights period should be shortened to 6 years or thereabouts.

Their patent didn’t last 50 years; shortening the patent period would have had little effect in this case.

I was commenting on the patent cycle in general, not the dry water patent in particular.

Re: Dry Water

#86

I wonder if it would make a good fire retardant. The water would heat up and make steam and burst out along with some CO2 trapped in it.

I work on an auto repair shop and was just thinking the same thing. We use a high pressure foam for fire suppression currently. The vendor says its a mix of soap, water, and co2. Only used it once but man is it messy!

Re: Dry Water

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many fields there are waves with the patent expiration cycle, for instance 3D printing or VR. As the patents expire there is a flurry of new research, everyone obtains new patents and it becomes impossible to create viable products again, until the patents expire and the cycle begins again.

That's very interesting, especially considering that patents were originally created to incentivize people to publish details of inventions so they could be publicly known and accessible in perpetuity. To better uphold their original purpose, perhaps the patent rights period should be shortened to 6 years or thereabouts.

Patents are only a problem for technologies with successful application. Ideally, once you have covered the R&D cost, it should be free for all.

Technologies without successful application is the interesting case. With patents, like in this case, they are locked for a while, but at least someone can pick them up. The alternative is to become lost in the archive of some R&D department.

That said, that's difficult to say. We have patents, companies haven't had to find a way to live in a modern world where obfuscation, secrecy are the primordial part of their DNA. Would we have had OSS before, or not at all? I guess that NDA and anti-compete contract laws would be much stricter maybe at a stifling level, medieval guilds style.

Re: Dry Water

#89

The patent getting snatched up by cosmetics and then re-discovered almost 50 years later makes me wonder how many cool advancements have been lost to industries that couldn't find any value from them.

That reminds me. There is a great talk from someone at Mozilla (Something about making an org that lasts 1000 years?). In the talk the idea is presented that things kept secret are eventually lost. This was fascinating to think about. It's been few years since I heard that talk and I now have seen a few examples of this around me.

Sounds interesting. Do you have a link or something?

Re: Dry Water

#90

I wonder if it would make a good fire retardant. The water would heat up and make steam and burst out along with some CO2 trapped in it.

It wouldn't be as good as Aerogel [1] which is a similar silica nano-particle based structure. It contains air as opposed to water so conducts very little heat.

[1] http://www.aerogel.org/?p=1929

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