Scientists Have Created A Golden Drop Of Metallic Water Against All Odds
Photo ID 74966910 © Nattawat Kaewjirasit | Dreamstime.com
When choosing a conductor for electricity, pure water isn’t what comes to mind. It’s the opposite, in fact; an insulator. But now, a team of scientists led by IOCB Prague’s Pavel Jungwirth has developed a technique to make metallic water.
Metallic water isn’t an entirely new concept; it can be created using a huge amount of pressure to compress the molecules. The tight compression forms a conduction band like the one found in metals. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, though; the pressure required is 50Mbar, which is commonly found in the cores of large planets, and is 50 times the amount of the pressure on the Earth’s surface.
Hence the excitement of these findings; a golden drop of water created without the need for such intense amounts of otherworldly pressure. In the researchers’ findings, published in Nature, they highlighted the golden drop’s composition: sodium-potassium alloy and a bit of water vapor. The water vapor condensed on the drop’s surface to create the gold color seen on the “final product” of the metallic drop.
Under usual circumstances, alkali metals immediately explode upon exposure to water. However, this is when the metal is added to water, just like the fondly remembered science class experiment of throwing sodium into water then watching chaos ensue. The team turned the process on its head and added water to the metal instead.
“Thanks to this, we were able to create a thin layer of gold-colored metallic water solution that lasted for several seconds, and that was enough for us to not only see it with our own eyes but also measure it with spectrometers,” says Jungwirth.
The evidence that this is indeed metallic water was then confirmed using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy on a synchrotron in Berlin. But as to whether or not it’s drinkable, that’s another question altogether.
[via SciTechDaily, photo ID 74966910 © Nattawat Kaewjirasit | Dreamstime.com ]
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