Weird, water-oozing material could help quench thirst

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by Plazma Inferno!, Jun 14, 2016.

  1. Plazma Inferno! Ding Ding Ding Ding Administrator

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    After their nanorods were accidentally created when an experiment didn’t go as planned, the researchers gave the microscopic, unplanned spawns of science a closer look.
    Chemist Satish Nune was inspecting the solid, carbon-rich nanorods with a vapor analysis instrument when he noticed the nanorods mysteriously lost weight as humidity increased. Thinking the instrument had malfunctioned, Nune and his colleagues moved on to another tool, a high-powered microscope.
    They jumped as they saw an unknown fluid unexpectedly appear between bunches of the tiny sticks and ooze out. Video recorded under the microscope is shaky at the beginning, as they quickly moved the view finder to capture the surprising event again.
    The team at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory would go on to view the same phenomenon more than a dozen times. Immediately after expelling the fluid, the nanorods’ weight decreased by about half, causing the researchers to scratch their heads even harder.
    A paper published in Nature Nanotechnology describes the physical processes behind this spectacle, which turned out to be the first experimental viewing of a phenomenon theorized 20-some years ago. The discovery could lead to a large range of real-world applications, including low-energy water harvesting and purification for the developing world, and fabric that automatically pulls sweat away from the body and releases it as a vapor.

    http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/2105.html
     

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