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In a mind-blowing experiment, scientists turned purified water into metal for a few fleeting seconds, allowing the liquid to conduct electricity.
Unfiltered water can already conduct electricity – which means negatively charged electrons can easily flow between its molecules – because unfiltered water contains salts, according to a statement on the new study. However, purified water contains only water molecules, the outermost electrons of which remain bound to their atoms, and thus, they cannot circulate freely in the water.
Theoretically, if sufficient pressure were applied to pure water, the water molecules would collapse and their valence shells, the outermost ring of electrons surrounding each atom, would overlap. This would allow electrons to flow freely between each molecule and would technically turn water into metal.
Related: The surprisingly strange physics of water
The problem is, to crush water into that metallic state, it would take 15 million atmospheres of pressure (about 220 million psi), said study author Pavel Jungwirth, a physical chemist at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. Nature news and commentaries. For this reason, geophysicists suspect that such metal-turned water could exist in the nuclei of huge planets like Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus, according to Nature News.
But Jungwirth and his colleagues wondered if they could turn water into metal in different ways, without creating the ridiculous pressures found in Jupiter’s core. They decided to use alkali metals, which include elements like sodium and potassium and contain only one electron in their valence shells. Alkali metals tend to “donate” this electron to other atoms when forming chemical bonds, because the “loss” of this isolated electron makes the alkali metal more stable.
Alkali metals can explode when exposed to water, and Jungwirth and his colleagues have actually studied these dramatic reactions in the past, according to Cosmos Magazine. But they theorized that if they could somehow prevent the explosion, they could borrow electrons from alkali metals and use those electrons to turn water into metal.
In their new experiment, described in a report published Wednesday (July 28) in the journal Nature, the team did just that. In the experiment, they placed a syringe filled with sodium and potassium in a vacuum chamber, extracted small metal droplets, which are liquid at room temperature, and then exposed said metal droplets to a tiny amount of vapor. of water. The water formed a 0.000003 inch (0.1 micrometer) film on the surface of the metal droplets, and immediately the electrons from the metals began to precipitate in the water.
For the experiment to work, electrons had to move faster than an explosive reaction could take place, Jungwirth told Nature News. And once the electrons went from the alkali metals to the water, an amazing thing happened: for a few short moments, the water took on a brilliant golden yellow color. Using spectroscopy, the team was able to show that the bright yellow water was in fact metallic.
“Our study not only shows that metallic water can indeed be produced on Earth, but also characterizes the spectroscopic properties associated with its magnificent golden metallic luster,” said study author Robert Seidel, group director. young researchers at Humboldt University in Berlin, the statement. “You can see the phase transition to metallic water with the naked eye,” he added.
“It was amazing, like [when] you discover a new element, ”Jungwirth told Nature News & Comment.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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