A team of scientists has succeeded in a feat believed to be extremely complex: transforming purified water into shiny metal
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himA team of scientists has succeeded in a feat believed to be extremely complex: transforming purified water into shiny metal. The interesting experiment, which lasted a few seconds, thus allowed the water to conduct electricity.
Unfiltered water can conduct electricity, as negatively charged electrons can travel between its molecules. Different speech for purified water. In this case, in fact, only if a sufficient level of pressure is applied, the molecules begin to crush and a condition is created in which the outermost rings of the electrons begin to overlap. This allows electrons to flow freely just as if water itself were a metal. However, to apply this pressure 15 million atmospheres are needed, a condition that occurs only in the cores of planets such as Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune.
But the team of researchers from the Prague Academy of Sciences, led by chemist Pavel Jungwirth, had a brilliant intuition and found an alternative method of turning pure water into metal without much effort. To do this, the researchers used alkali metals which include sodium and potassium among other elements and which contain only one electron in the valence shells. Alkali metals, however, tend to explode when exposed to water and, to prevent this from happening, scientists have adopted a particular method of passing electrons from alkali metals to water, using a syringe. And something exceptional happened: the water took on a golden color. Thus, by repeating the experiment and using spectroscopy, the researchers realized that the water had turned metallic for a few seconds.
“It was great, like discovering a new element,” commented Professor Jungwirth.
The extraordinary results of the new study, published in the prestigious journal Nature, show in fact that metallic water can be easily created even on our planet.
Our study not only shows that metallic water can actually be produced on Earth, but also features the spectroscopic properties associated with its stunning golden metallic sheen - explains Robert Seidel, head of the Young Investigator Group at the Humboldt University of Berlin and co -author of the research. - You can see the phase transition to metallic water with the naked eye.
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Sources: Nature / IOCB Prague (YouTube)
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