Metallic Water Now A Thing

Been following this "mad" scientists work on trying to figure out if Sodium can be utilized as a fuel source for the world...as when it burns with water, it consumes CO2 during the process. During his work, he needed to figure out how to better control the Sodium reaction with water (it will explode if just dropped into water). During this work, they observed for the first time ever "metallic" water....where electrons being liberated from the liquid Sodium/Potassium drop are able to flow freely between water vapour molecules on the surface of the drop...the water has become a conductive metal:



This work is being partially funded by his YouTube channel donations. They've published this in about the most prestigious science journal in the world, Nature.

Water is conductive in it's natural state.

I don't get it...

grandpaul said:

Water is conductive in it's natural state.

I don't get it...

Click to expand...

Not pure water, which is an insulator. Its dissolved ions which usually conduct current. A metal is conductive because electrons can freely move from metal atom to metal atom.

Water is conductive in it's natural state.

Click to expand...

This is why Lucas and water get on like a house on fire .

Add salt to pure water and it becomes conductive, that's why electricity is limited in the bathroom to enclosed lights and the shaver socket. How can you say water becomes metallic with sodium or any other metal dropped into it, its just water with small amounts of a metal in solution.

If you watch and listen to details in the video, they make no measures of conductivity. The water here is only from vapour forming a vanishingly thin layer on the drop of liquid Sodium/Potassium. The colour changes seen as the water contacts the drop is from 'free' electrons between the water molecules. They proved this via spectroscoptic analysis with x-rays. If there was a way to measure conductivity of this metallic water, it would be as conductive as most standard metals. Unlike water with salt ions which is still not a great conductor.