Technology and inventions are the great wealth of our humanity, so the world we know today would not exist without these two factors. Therefore, encouraging science and innovation are so important, especially for our country, which needs a little push in this sector.
Related to this topic, today we brought news that had a strong impact on the research area, from which the metal was created Waterfall pure! View more information about this process.
Read more: Why are there few blue things in nature? Science explains
Pure water turns into metal
Under sufficiently high pressures, virtually any material can, in theory, become conductive. However, contrary to what many think, it’s not just high pressures that can induce this metallicity in pure water, after all.
To justify this claim, researchers have already confirmed it in practice in 2021. However, let’s better understand how this new way of giving water a metallic character works.
A little more on the theory
By putting pure water (without impurities or salts of any kind) in contact with an electron-sharing alkaline type metal (an alloy of sodium and potassium), it is possible to add freely moving charged particles, making the water metallic.
The theory can be complicated, but if you press hard enough on the atoms, the orbitals of the outer electrons will begin to overlap, allowing them to move. In our case, for water, that pressure is just under 48 million times the Earth’s atmospheric pressure at sea level. Look at the image released by the scientists involved:
Through the drop it is even possible to see the reflection of the person who was in the place. Parallel to this, we can already perceive with the naked eye one of the characteristics of metals, which is their metallic luster.
Does this change the water permanently?
Despite being something completely new, the resulting conductivity only lasts a few seconds. However, it should be emphasized that this is a significant step towards understanding this phase of water by studying it directly.
The research was published in Nature.
