4 ms·
Pure (eg. Distilled) water isn't a very good conductor at all. It's only when you add contaminant ions that it starts to conduct electricity in any meaningful
by FLT8 3y ago
Pure (eg. Distilled) water isn't a very good conductor at all. It's only when you add contaminant ions that it starts to conduct electricity in any meaningful sense.
Most people's experience with water rapidly destroying electronics is probably with highly ionised water such as sea water or water in the washing machine which has washing powder added.
Of course, it's worth pointing out in this case that as per the comments HZO claim they used water straight from the tap, so it's probably still an impressive enough achievement.
I'm curious how they went about sealing the external connectors (usb, hdmi), because surely those would need to be exposed and with the voltage present would act as points of corrosion. The pins on the Pi connectors are quite tightly spaced too. Maybe the AC nature of most of the signals helps there?
- ajsnigrutin 3y agoElectronic are dirty, your keyboard has a lot of junk, even salt from chips and pretzels, sugar from sticky fingers, etc. Spilling even distilled water on your keyboard dissolves all of that and makes the water conductive. Luckily some better laptops have channels (drip holes) for water to drain without affecting the board, but relying on bad conductivity of distilled wated in real-life scenarios is really not safe :)
- bruce511 3y agoI considered digressing into this in my post, but while completely true, I concluded its also irrelevant to the point being discussed. Even tap water has sufficient contaminants to make it an excellent conductor. Outside of very clean, very lab, conditions, water conducts really well. But your point is a nice aside, and I'm glad you brought it up. Incidentally -drinking- pure distilled water tastes funny.
- kadoban 3y agoPlus even if you use distilled water, it'll probably find something to disolve a bit of if you keep in on your electronics for long and then it'll conduct a lot better.
- somat 3y agoOnce you have your ultra pure water, and are willing to commit to maintaining the apparatus that keeps it that way. There is a second problem, extremely pure water is surprisingly corrosive, A laymans explanation is that it would be happier with a few ions, and will gleefuly strip them off any exposed metal. Which is a shame. It would be nice if water could be used directly in an immersion environment. Much better thermal properties than anything else, and no mess,