OK, frightened to ask this question in case i get laughed at but what the heck…
Two questions on groovy liquid stuffs:
Is there really such a liquid that allows people to breath when submerged in it, such as that shown on the film ‘The Abyss’ several years ago? I suspect it’s just sci-fi but someone else mentioned this to me recently and now i need to know.
Thinking about this made me recall another cool type of liquid shown on a science programme years ago. I was very yound at the time and as such may have completly missed the fact that it was april fools day or something. Anyway, this liquid allowed electrical equipment to be submerged in it without ill effect. It was demonstrated by showing a clear tank filled with this clear liquid and then they submerged a working tv set in it. Does this really exist and if so what is it?
Yes; pretty much the only requirement is that it be a good electrical insulator (unless the device has moving parts, in which case the viscosity of the fluid might stop it working properly).
Surprisingly, water, if it is pure enough, is quite a good insulator - dumping an electronic device in a tank of pure water would very quickly render it sufficiently impure as to cause problems though, I suspect.
I remember seeing #1 on That’s Incredible back when I was a wee one. Supposedely it was also going to be suitable as a replacement for blood.
As for #2, I imagine you could maybe do the same with distilled water, that is, absolutely perfect, idealized distilled water. There’s no real difference between a fluid being a gas or a liquid. The problem with water is that when it contains salts it becomes a fairly decent conductor, shorting out everything in the TV. So, steam clean the TV to make sure it’s not dirty, and drop it into any non-conductive liquid, and this lay person doesn’t see a problem.
My dad worked for the National Grid in the UK for a while and he once told me that when they had to wash the power lines the company would use pure water, that is to say water with all the minerals taken out, just H2O. It is the minerals that conduct the electricity as they are metals. So it would seem that they could have done this in your tank.
The contaminants in water that make it conduct don’t have to be metals. It’s the fact that they’re ions when dissolved in water that causes it to conduct. Metals conduct electricity for a different reason.
High power radar sets use dielectic liquid coolant. I think the stuff we used in F-14s went by the brand name Coolanol or somethinglike that. Worked great until it got moisture contamination as that caused the coolant to form spongy, conductive masses that played hell with the 13KV power supplies.
It should be noted that fluorocarbons (and hydrofluorocarbons, HFCs) do not damage stratospheric ozone, unlike CFCs such as Freon. CFCs cannot be broken down easily in the atmosphere, so they survive long enough to reach the stratospheric ozone and destroy it. HFCs can be removed from the atmosphere by reaction with hydroxyl radicals in the troposphere. I’m not actually certain that perfluorocarbons don’t harm stratospheric ozone because the reaction usually occurs at a hydrogen, but at any rate they would be less dangerous than CFCs and may not be dangerous at all.
