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This seemed interesting to me but I didn't fully understand it. The article states: > Within these normally immiscible mixtures, they observed ultrathin but ab

This seemed interesting to me but I didn't fully understand it. The article states: > Within these normally immiscible mixtures, they observed ultrathin but abnormally stable films of oil spontaneously appearing between the dispersed droplets of water. And there is more information about what they observed. But I was completely unclear of the procedure they used to get these "normally immiscible mixtures" to behave in this way in the first place. Any ideas?

alwa 3y ago
Here’s the link to the study in Science: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj6728 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj6728 I found their editor’s summary informative: > Basic chemistry tells us that dissimilar compounds such as oil and water won’t mix without the aid of a surfactant. Typically, the addition of a third component is needed to allow droplets of one to be stabilized within the other. Nannette et al. have revealed an exception to this behavior: the mixing of water with a polymeric oil. When a thin layer of oil absorbs onto the surface of water droplets, it stabilizes the droplets and causes a weak attraction between them, leading to long-term stability. —Marc S. Lavine Their supplementary materials, which include their methods, are openly available: https://www.science.org/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1126%2Fscience.adj6728&file=science.adj6728_sm.pdf https://www.science.org/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.112... I wish I could access the study itself, but alas. From the methods and discussions it sounds to my layman’s ears like they use oils modified for cross-linking potential then went water-into-oil pretty slowly, in an environment that shears the whole situation into thin sheets at the interface. And that the novelty is that the cross-linked oils, polymerized around these little water spheres, were stable enough to resist coalescing even without the help of a surfactant to repel the little droplets from one another?
joecool1029 3y ago
Heat can polymerize some oils pretty quickly. Thinking flax oil is a very easily to polymerize one (it's fast but kind of fragile to season cast iron with it). Ever have a bottle of cooking oil go bad and it forms that sticky residue on outside? As I understand this is the oil polymerizing. Wondering if having oils polymerize makes it so the outside of the linked molecule links in some way that water is prevented from being repelled as well (or it busts it into much smaller droplets they couldn't see). The abnormally stable part throws me off though. If someone could liberate this paper that'd be great.

alwa 3y ago

Here’s the link to the study in Science: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj6728 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj6728 I found their editor’s summary informative: > Basic chemistry tells us that dissimilar compounds such as oil and water won’t mix without the aid of a surfactant. Typically, the addition of a third component is needed to allow droplets of one to be stabilized within the other. Nannette et al. have revealed an exception to this behavior: the mixing of water with a polymeric oil. When a thin layer of oil absorbs onto the surface of water droplets, it stabilizes the droplets and causes a weak attraction between them, leading to long-term stability. —Marc S. Lavine Their supplementary materials, which include their methods, are openly available: https://www.science.org/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1126%2Fscience.adj6728&file=science.adj6728_sm.pdf https://www.science.org/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.112... I wish I could access the study itself, but alas. From the methods and discussions it sounds to my layman’s ears like they use oils modified for cross-linking potential then went water-into-oil pretty slowly, in an environment that shears the whole situation into thin sheets at the interface. And that the novelty is that the cross-linked oils, polymerized around these little water spheres, were stable enough to resist coalescing even without the help of a surfactant to repel the little droplets from one another?

joecool1029 3y ago

Heat can polymerize some oils pretty quickly. Thinking flax oil is a very easily to polymerize one (it's fast but kind of fragile to season cast iron with it). Ever have a bottle of cooking oil go bad and it forms that sticky residue on outside? As I understand this is the oil polymerizing. Wondering if having oils polymerize makes it so the outside of the linked molecule links in some way that water is prevented from being repelled as well (or it busts it into much smaller droplets they couldn't see). The abnormally stable part throws me off though. If someone could liberate this paper that'd be great.