Looking at the comments lately, it’s very obvious that Lemmy inherited the last exodus of 4chan and the scum pool that is left of Reddit. Why do so many people not grow up? Why are so many people internally immature? Why the fuck do we have to deal with their inadequacies? Arguing a joke is utter nonsense. Do you not get that? It’s a joke. It’s already nonsense. You look like fucking idiots and you bring a bad vibe to good things. And you know that I’m talking to you… you child.
Seems like fairly civilized conversation in here tbh, I dont really see anyone getting personal. This is the kind of conversation everyone wanted Lemmy to have someday, right? Except for your comment, that one is pretty mean spirited with no intention of joining in the existing conversation and mine, which is taking the bait.
I don’t think there’s been much change tbh
No u
Looking at the comments lately, it’s very obvious that Lemmy inherited the last exodus of 4chan and the scum pool that is left of Reddit.
says the person who’s been here for 3 weeks
Arguing can be fun, and some of us just want a break from The Horrors™ every once in a while. Arguing a joke sounds like a nice, harmless change of pace
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Police. Yeah I’d like to report a murder.
Good luck finding the body, that lake never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy
That is outstanding.
If everything water touches is wet, and water touches itself, then water is wet.
You can’t wet a lake
Because it’s already wet
Water isn’t you lmao gottem
wetting is the process of a liquid adhering to a surface. water by definition can’t be wet
Except for the fact that water by definition is wet
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wet
Fun fact: there is no such thing as a universally accepted definition. Words mean what we mean when we say them. And the vast majority of people use “wet” to describe something that is made up of, touching, or covered in a liquid, especially water. The arbitrary assertion that the definition somehow only applies to solids is just facile contrarianism with no actual basis in linguistics.
yeah but you know what the vast majority of people are like
Liquids don’t have surfaces?
The property of cohesion means that water is touching and adhering to the surface of other water molecules.
It doesn’t change Tom Fitton being a shit, but facts do matter.
Then literally everything is wet, because the air contains water molecules! But we don’t say everything is wet, just like water molecules touching water molecules don’t make each other wet.
The water in the air is not liquid water. Unless it’s raining, in which case it’s very much liquid water, and you’re very wet if you’re standing in it
Yes, the water in the air is not liquid water, just like individual water molecules are not liquid water. You got it!
An individual water molecule is not liquid, but if it’s touching other water molecules that are in a liquid state, then it is wet.
Water molecules can’t be in a liquid state, it’s only the aggregate that’s liquid. Therefore water molecules can’t be wet.
I mean I’d say that counts as wet.
So literally everything on the surface of the planet, in every building, in every room, is wet? That makes it a completely useless definition and is obviously not what anyone means when they’re talking about something being “wet”.
It’s not useless if you understand wet as a relative term. There can be a normal level of wetness where if it is exceeded we then call that thing wet, and if it’s under that threshold we call it dry relative to the norm.
If air with 0% humidity can be called dry, then air with humidity can be called wet.
Language isn’t perfect and it’s often contextual. If someone wants to describe a property of water based on a newer usage in physics, maybe choose a newer word.
If air with 0% humidity can be called dry, then air with humidity can be called wet.
Yet we don’t do this, we call it humid.
What is humidity other than the measurement of how saturated the air is with water vapor (or how wet the air is)
Solid (frozen) water, commonly referred to as “ice,” can have a surface.
is ice wet?
It can be, but the ice itself is not wet.
By your bizarre definition, yes.
That’s the actual definition. That’s why bad solder joints are called dry joints and melting the solder across a soldering iron tip is called wetting the tip.
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It’s not “less than meaningful” if you understand wet as a relative term. There can be a normal level of wetness where if it is exceeded we then call that thing wet, and if it’s under that threshold we call it dry relative to the norm.
If you somehow came from a perfectly dry environment, yeah, you would probably consider our world pretty wet. You would have a pretty hard time describing your experience to others if you couldn’t use the word wet to do so. The word doesn’t lose meaning just because you go all reductio ad adsurdum with it.
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Another note (which you mentioning air made me think of), if water “has no surface” then how does it have “surface tension?” Another point for “water touches water.”
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“Wet” Is used as an adjective describing something that consists of or is touching some liquid. Nobody seems to have a problem with the concept of wet paint. I can’t imagine anyone other than Sheldon Cooper saying “technically the wall is wet, the paint is liquid!” If you would say that, I have a locker to shove you in
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But that’s not the definition of wet. Wet is something having liquid adhere to it, usually water. It’s a gained quality. Water doesn’t adhere to itself, it can’t gain the quality of being wet because it is the thing that gives that quality. It’s like saying that fire is burnt. It does the burning.
wet
1 of 3
adjective
ˈwet
wetter; wettest
Synonyms of wet
1
a
: consisting of, containing, covered with, or soaked with liquid (such as water)Water definitely consists of water my man
Maybe by your definition, but have you considered that the definitions that I like are the objectively correct ones?
/s shouldn’t be necessary but this is the internet
Honestly, without the /s I would have assumed idiocy over sarcasm. I hate that I would usually be right in doing so.
Water literally adheres to itself. That’s one of its most important qualities.
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Heat is indeed hot.
Since heat is thermal energy, it can transfer this thermal energy but it loses some due to the second law of thermodynamics. Water doesn’t lose the ability to adhere to other things when it transfers, so the two phenomenon are not really equateable.
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Fair enough, heat can’t lose heat. However when it interacts with a substance some of the energy is “lost” in that it transfers to the substance. Unless it is a completely inert material.
Can you hold a unit of heat? Or do you hold a substance that is imbued with heat energy? Seems like a good reason to say the two are not equateable, which was the main point.
Other than that, a specific fields definition of wet does not make the term exclusive to that field. In aquatic science, wet still means something that water is adhering to. Water adheres to itself so water is wet.
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Actually fire is the byproduct of a chemical reaction. The material being combusted is the one doing the burning. Fire (rather, extreme heat) can cause combustion in other materials, given an oxygen rich environment, but the fire is not itself doing the combustion or burning.
Wetness is not a chemical reaction, so it’s kind of an apples to oranges comparison.
Water is cohesive which means yes, it does attach to itself. It’s one of the main reasons capillary action works and your blood flows the way it does.
obviously not a lot of blood flow going on in this thread
Nevermind what his view on abortion is. Why does he have to start something on a post about womens rights unless he thinks they should not have rights?
water isnt wet bro it just makes everything it touches wet but i SWEAR its not wet bro pls just believe me i have to be right its not wet
This is physically correct
This but unironically
It’s such a weird thing to say that it’s dry.
Why can’t it be neither? Being wet or dry is a property of solids, or maybe gasses (where you’d say “humid” rather than “wet”). It doesn’t make sense as a qualifier of water itself.
It can be neither, I said it’s weird when people say it’s dry.
I never got it either. I think they’re just contrarians. They just want to feel like they discovered something novel that all the people before them got wrong so they can indulge in pedantic arguments about it.
That is, when it’s not engagement baiting like the tweet above.
Possibly. Some do, I’m sure.
I see a lot of people try to answer brainteaser questions like this as if they can be driven down to some scientific ultimatum, but science can’t answer questions of philosophy. “Wet” is something we made up. A towel doesn’t care if it’s “damp” or not. How could it?
See my other comment if you want a link to a fun Vsauce video.
You fucking idiots. Real ones know wetness is how much vermouth it has in it.
I’d like a proper wet and dirty one right now, gawddamn
Churchill apocryphally liked his martinis so dry that he would observe the bottle of vermouth while pouring the gin, and that was enough
The gales of November came way early this year.
unless theres more than one molecule of water, its touching itself
If that’s true then holy water is a lie
You can only have one molecule of holy water in a container at a time
Getting into a political argument with a lake account. The lake account using 1st person language as Lake Superior.
Our ancestors would marvel at our reality!
The lake account using 1st person language as Lake Superior.
Are you suggesting that account isn’t Lake Superior’s account? Clearly lakes microblog.
Superior is more of a macro blog, no?
Definitely a macro bog at least
Lmao
I don’t know, getting into arguments with sentient geo/hydrological features seems like the kind of thing our ancestors would have done
Water deities in ancient mythologies: Am I a joke to you?
A single molecule of water is not wet but as soon as more then one molecule is present the water is then wet. That is my hill to die on in this argument.
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Wetting is an actual physical process that occurs between a liquid and a solid, or two unmixable liquids:
I disagree. Mixing water and another liquid does not make the second liquid “wet” - it makes a mixture. Then if you apply that mixture to a solid the solid becomes wet until the liquid leaves through various processes and becomes dry. If that process is evaporation, the air does not become wet it becomes humid.
I mean. The molecule itself isn’t a solid or liquid, that has to do with the behavior of the molecules in dimensional space. Your argument is based on water as a substance, not as a molecule, completely avoiding the basis of their argument.
Besides that, most liquids you could easily mix with water are themselves water-based and therefore would be totally dried up into a powder or perhaps a jelly without their water content. To add water is to make them wet, and then they exist as a wet incorporated substance. As liquid substances. In fact, they could not dry up if they were not wet in the first place; to become dry is to transition away from the state of being wet.
You know what else dries up? Water.
Your argument is based on water as a substance, not as a molecule
Water cant be just a molecule, as the relationship between molecules of a substance at different temperatures is what makes something a solid, liquid, gas, or plasma. Water is the liquid state of H2O, and thus one molecule of that would just be a single H2O
You know what else dries up? Water.
That’s just the H2O changing phase to gaseous, it doesn’t stop existing. I’d personally classify humidity as “wet”, as would most people I’ve met, so it’s still wet after “drying”
I’d say wet and dry are relative terms here but ultimately, yes, you and I are in agreement that water is wet.
Those things are mostly true yes but we’re talking about the function of the adjective wet in language and the phenomenon of wetness as a linguistical descriptor and livable experience. Obviously things are wet, it’s an incredibly common and useful term, but it probably does elude rigid classification and all you’re going to get are opinions because there’s no way to rigidly define it. It’s a “heap problem” there isn’t a specific point where something becomes a heap, but yet you can heap thing.
You sure bailed from your entire argument pretty darn quickly to now argue “there’s no way to rigidly define it.” There is. It’s “wet.” It behaves in the way wet things do. There’s no reason to say otherwise than to be contrarian. The only way to argue otherwise is to create a strict definition of wetness, as you just have, which ultimately fails when put up against reality and a more human use of language.
I’m confused, how does any of this help me determine whether that dude is a skilled lover or not?
sadly my wife isn’t on lemmy so we will never know
“Wet”, like “funny”, “beautiful”, “delicious”, “bright”, “hot”, “spicy”, "soft’, “hairy”, “clean”, “malleable” are subjective, context specific, descriptors. You can’t describe how many hairs makes something hairy: three hairs on a bowl of ice cream is hairy, but the opposite on a human head.
is a cloud wet?
a cloud is (basically not exactly) “steam” - steam makes things wet when it condenses into water
(clouds of water on Earth at least, not Venusian clouds of Sulphur for eg)
The word you might be looking for is vapor.
Clouds are water vapor.
yes but I didn’t want to get dragged into whether vapor was wet.
It’s not solid, so no. It’s humid.
does that also classify as moist?
Yes, moist can mean humid.
Water (and other liquids) make solid things wet.
If you put water and oil in a container and they separate, the interface between them is not wet.
Humid air can make things wet, but that only happens when the moisture in the air condenses onto a solid surface. Humid air will not make the surface of a lake wet even though water is condensing out of the air onto that surface.
If there is two molecules of water which one is the dry molecule and which one is the wet molecule?
If there are three molecules does one get divided in half to make the other two wet or does only one get wet and one stays dry until a fourth arrives?
If there are*
And they both get wet, since they’re both touching other water molecules. As goes for any other number above one. All of this is very obvious.
Thank you for this. I need more people to be on board with this explanation.
A single drop has over 1.5 sextillion molecules (21 zeroes), so yeh even a single drop is wet, debates over cuz allow it.
I’d still argue water molecules touching eachother make themselves wet, but that guy is an ass so fuck him.
actually water molecules are cohesive (attracted to each other, yes in that sense you are right) but wetness is associated with adhesion which basically means the possibility of a liquid to adhere to a solid surface so no, water molecule themselves alone are not enough to fit into the definition of wetness i hope i wasnt too technical but i tried to be as dummy as possible
Wwweeeeeeeellllllll see, water is also touching itself constantly. Something being wet is a material surrounded by water, like the fibers of a sponge surrounded by water, in example.
In water, every water molecule is surrounded by water molecules. This means every given water molecule can be considered wet. And thus water is wet.
If I have a single water molecule then it is still water but it isn’t touching any other water molecule, thus it isn’t wet
Exactly. So the only instance water is dry, and thus not wet, is if it’s a single lonely molecule.
But water tends to come in herds, so that basically never happens.
Is the polar-bonded surface layer of water wet? It is not entirely surrounded by water.
I’d say that’s dry, as it’s in contact with air. Or perhaps just moist, as it’s partially in contact with water.
Well no one would consider something with a single water molecule on it wet either.
Yup, that further confirms what I said
Something being wet is a material surrounded by water
So if I set my hand in water it’s not wet because it’s not immersed? What if it’s not water?
Can other liquids be wet? If I dump water into a bucket of gasoline, is my gasoline wet?
If I mix a soluble powder into water, like sugar, do I have wet sugar or sugared water? Do they have to be in contact? Is a phone in a bag in water wet because it’s surrounded by water, or dry because there’s air between it and the water?
What about those hydrophobic materials that can be dunked in water and come out dry? What about non-liquid phases of water? Is steam wet? If I dump water on ice is there a difference in how wet it is?The common colloquial definition of “wet” is “to be touched by a liquid”. The scientific is for a liquid to displace a gas to maintain contact with a surface via intramolecular forces. Water becomes a better wetter if we add soap because it no longer tries to bind to itself instead of what it’s wetting.
Neither of these has the water itself being wet, but you can have “wet ice”.
Let’s not pretend that a more scientific sounding colloquial definition is actually more scientific.
you’re right about this
“to be touched by a liquid”
but its more of a simple definition however if you went more technical by biology and chemistry laws, wetness is about adhesion (liquid to solid surface contact) and water is cohesive (attracted to each other) but if you want to get reallyyyy into it you might tell me about mercurium, have you seen mercurium? because its freaking cool btw chemistry ftw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upRM7ykQloI the reason why mercurium wont wet things is because its cohesion is stronger than its adhesion, so any liquid that happens to be like this, this is why
- Maybe. You are made mostly of water, so I don’t see why lot.
- Same logic applies to liquids that aren’t water.
- Gasoline being wet is an actual term, though.
- Yes, you have wet sugar. The sugar has just become reeeaaaally really small.
- The phone is dry. The bag it’s in is moist.
- If those materials are so scared of water, they shouldn’t be near water.
- Steam has air between it. It’s dry or moist. Ice is just water holding g hands.
no, if water was just hydrogens yes but no because then its no longer water but with the oxygen the water molecules are not exactly touching each other plus the definition of wetness is about the adhesion (liquid to solid surface contact) and water is cohesive (attracted to each other)
