Liquid that does nothing

[Roadfood]

Does anyone else remember this, or did I dream it?

I have a memory from probably the 70's (and before the jokes and insinuations start, I honestly didn't do drugs, ok?) of a TV commercial. It was probably from Dupont or some similar company. It was one of those that was selling the company, not a particular product.

What I remember was a researcher in some sort of chemistry-type laboratory. The voice-over talked about how one of the company scientists had made (or discovered) a liquid that did absolutely nothing. The implication (or maybe outright statement) was, at first, that it was also good-for-nothing. Then the scientist paused and thought. Next we see him putting a playing radio into a fishtank of this liquid, and the radio keeps playing. Then, I swear I remember him putting a rat into the liquid -- all the way in -- and the rat keeps wiggling normally, as if being held in the air. The rat is then removed with apparently no ill effects.

So does anyone remember this commercial? And/or, does anyone know of this "miracle" liquid and what ever became of it? Or did I really just dream it?

[Mangetout]

There is an interesting group of liquids called Perfluorocarbons, these (in theory at least) can contain enough dissolved oxygen to enable a breathing animal to be fully immersed and breathe the liquid, you may have seen this in the film The Abyss - this part was more than just fiction, but there are problems;laboratory animals subjected to immersion didn't tend to live for very long afterward - research continues.

Here's just one of the interesting (but slightly crackpot) citesI found:the bretahing pool

However, whether this was your mystery liquid, I can't say.

[Mangetout]

Breathing, that was supposed to read

[dolphinboy]

What a coincidence... I just was reading this on the HowStuffWorks website's "Question of the Day". Hope this helps..

"Instead of breathing gas, the diver breaths a non-compressible, liquid perfluorocarbon compound that contains oxygen. Because no gas phase is in contact with the blood, and nitrogen is not used, the danger of forming nitrogen bubbles does not exist. In the 1960s, it was shown that rats could survive for up to 20 hours when immersed in such a mixture."

[SouprChckn]

One of those chemical companies also makes an inert liquid/gel deal. Its terribly expensive but it allows you to immerse electronics and anything conductive into it w/ no problems. I remember reading about some guys overclocking a computer by immersing their mobo into a vat of this stuff and cooling the inert liquid w/ liquid nitrogen.

[SouprChckn]

One of those chemical companies also makes an inert liquid/gel deal. Its terribly expensive but it allows you to immerse electronics and anything conductive into it w/ no problems. I remember reading about some guys overclocking a computer by immersing their mobo into a vat of this stuff and cooling the inert liquid w/ liquid nitrogen.

[reprise]

I remember it well - I think I saw it on "Beyond 2000".

One theoretical application was in treating premature babies.

[Saltire]

The scene on Beyond 2000 involved a Macintosh Classic in an aquarium half-full of a florocarbon. They were demonstrating that the reason that flourocarbons were once so popular is that they didn't promote corrosion, weren't flamable, didn't conduct electricity, and were completely nontoxic. Then someone discovered that they have a tendency to deplete the ozone layer. Oh, well, another miracle of chemistry shot down.

[Saltire]

Before I get nailed by a bunch of chemists, I'd like to say that I should have been referring to chloroflorocarbons in the last post.

[Zenster]

Originally posted by SouprChckn
...I remember reading about some guys overclocking a computer by immersing their mobo into a vat of this stuff and cooling the inert liquid w/ liquid nitrogen.

That would be the Cray II supercomputer, and only the central processor, buffers and cache memory received immersion cooling. And regular compressors seem to work just fine with liquid freons.

[Andy]

Saltire: I think either could perform the same function, as both are extremely inert....except for CFCs towards ozone of course

[Andy]

Alliance Pharmaceutical Corp. Announces Preliminary Results of LiquiVent® Phase 2-3 Clinical Study, May 21, 2001

Apparently not a great clinical success, but it seems the principle is perfectly workable.

[Mangetout]

I think I'm right in saying that completely pure deionised water is also a pretty good insulator, it's only when you start adding impurities that it becomes conductive, unfortunately of course immersing a radio in it would do just that.

[SouprChckn]

Originally posted by Zenster
That would be the Cray II supercomputer, and only the central processor, buffers and cache memory received immersion cooling. And regular compressors seem to work just fine with liquid freons.

Actually, this was actually a bunch of guys who were curious how fast they could get their regular computer to go if they went to the extreme in cooling. Obviously its not a pratical choice for overclocking but it was definitely not a supercomputer, just a bunch of wild and crazy guys. There were pics so I'm pretty sure it was real.

[Homer]

Isn't the problem with using it to replace air for breathing that it strips the linings of the lungs leading to expensive procedures to replace the fluids that line the lungs so infection does not occur? Why can't they create a 'false' lung fluid to inhale after exhaling the perflourocarbon?

--Tim

[Andy]

Homer, I haven't read that that's a problem and I'd be surprised if it were as these liquids are totally immiscible with water.

They're fun to play with too. Often chemists use the immiscibility of organic solvents with water to their advantage in separating the solutes.
Add a sufficiently fluorinated hydrocarbon and you get three separate layers
Cool if you're a bit geeky I suppose.

[ModernRonin2]

The stuff SouprChicken is referring to is made by
3M (same people who make scotch tape and sticky notes)
and is known the by trade name "Fluorinert." It is a
CFC as others have mentioned. It's a lot like water, but
for practical purposes it doesn't conduct electricity.

You can see the crazy overclockers immerse a whole motherboard in liquid-nitrogen cooled fluorinert and turn
the 566 MHz Intel Celeron CPU up to 1057 Mhz (!) at
http://www.octools.com/articles/subm...bmersion2.html


-Ben