IUBio

Increase the surface tension of water

Peter Ceresole peter at cara.demon.co.uk
Tue Jan 7 16:05:28 EST 1997


In article <32d1c6fc.165099951 at news.netonecom.net>,
ron.schwarz[at]nethawk.com ((Delete spam-buster ([at]) to reply wrote:

>You need to dry out the upper layer (known scientifically as its
>"skin"), which will result in it being thickened, and strengthened.
>
>Most modern labs, interestingly enough, use a common hair dryer -- but
>if you decide to try this method, make sure you don't *stand* in the
>water, and make sure you keep the heat on a *very* low setting; a
>blast of warm air will actually melt the skin layer (its melting point
>is quite low) and allow the wet water below to evaporate!

When I was a student doing odd jobs back in the sixties, we use a special
blotting paper with micro-pores to dry out the water surface. The extremely
fine structure would let the wet through, leaving the surface dry but
intact. It was part of a service to shops, to prevent the rain wetting and
staining their display windows in winter.

In the summer of course the job was different; then, as I decribed here
before, we would go round at night with special rollers to rectify glass
(which as everyone knows is a supercooled liquid which flows more quickly
at summer temperatures) which had slumped under the influence of gravity
and so distorted the view of the display. The most interesting job was to
fix the stained glass at Salisbury Cathedral. Some of it had flowed almost
out of the frame. It was a controversial job (some traditionalists objected
that stained glass had always looked like that and objected to having it
fixed) but we were proud to have been chosen to do the job.     

-- 
Peter



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