Why is a glass of hot and cold water from the tap cloudy?
Air in the water…let it sit. It will clear up.
Sure, but a glass of just hot or just cold is also aerated, but not cloudy.
This is one of those entropy things, isn’t it?
Do you have a Tap Aerator installed.
ps I always thought USA people called them faucets
??
What did your op say?
… goes to kitchen to perform experiment …
Hot only - not cloudy
Cold only - not cloudy
Half hot then half cold - not cloudy
Half cold then half hot - not cloudy
Well as you can see I could not duplicate the effect.
Gasses are more soluble in colder water. Perhaps the addition of hot water is precipitating out dissolved gasses from the saturated cold.
Actually that applies to oxygen, rather than other atmospheric gasses. So perhaps your cold water is super oxygenated.
Won’t happen in the kitchen with a single tap, in the bathroom with two taps it requires just the temperature I rinse with. I vote for the dissolved gases and a particualr tap configuration.
I’ve seen this before with a number of different taps and it seems to happen most often if the tap is one of those that emits a loud hissing or squealing sound as the water emerges (or an normal one that is partially opened so that emits a noise) - I think what is happening is either that the high-frequency vibrations from the noise are causing little bubbles of gas to come out of solution, or they are creating little bubbles from air trapped somewhere inside the tap and mixing them in.
I just checked - N2 gas solubility in water decreases until about 70° C, and then begins to increase. Couldn’t find any good solubility curves on the web.
So nitrogen would be coming out as well.
FWIW: It’s from a well. A newly filled aquarium has gas bubbles form on the bottom and sides.
The solubility of gases generally decreases with increasing temperature.
Why does the solubility of gases usually increase as temperature goes down?
Are you in limestone country? The gas could easily be CO[sub]2[/sub].
Shale and quartz.