Bending streams of water with a static charge // Homemade Science with Bruce Yeany
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 มิ.ย. 2024
- Why does a stream of water bend when a static charge is brought near it? This experiment and variations of it are explored as several theories are introduced and a variety of tests are offered to for further investigation. For many years I have offered the the explanation that water bends as a result of the dipolar nature of water and it's ability to orient itself towards an attract charge. Further research of this experiment and some some simple experimentation suggests that there is much more going on than this theory explains. Many of the experiments shown here were designed on the spot so I have not fully concluded their significance or lack of it. I anticipate that many viewers have a better working knowledge of this phenomenon and will offer some insight into what I have missed or where I am wrong. I look forward to any helpful insight that is offered. Here is a short listing of some websites that have offered information on bending water. feel free of offer additional sites in the comments.
www.thenakedscientists.com/ge...
www.scientificamerican.com/ar...
www.smarterthanthat.com/experi...
www.wikihow.com/Bend-Water-wit...
physics.stackexchange.com/que...
www.sciencefairadventure.com/P...
www.physicsclassroom.com/class...
demos.smu.ca/index.php/demos/...
littlesciencequestions.wordpr...
video from vertasium • Explained: 5 Fun Physi...
• How to WATER BEND | Us...
Sometimes the best experiments generate more questions than they answer--thumbs up!
Here we see the master teaching the art of Waterbending.
Didnt expect these results. Interesting.
Genuinly surprised by your findings and impressed by your approach - I am quite excited to make some experiments myself and see your continued findings.
Hey Per-Viktor, thanks I would be interested to hear what you find also.
Maybe no answers but a fantastic demonstration of scientific method and having to re-think when your predictions are blown out of the water. Thanks Bruce, from a future Chalky.
Thanks for another great video Yeany. Best thing is that it leaves you wanting to go and explore combinations and scenarios of your own.
exactly, thanks SSquid
Brilliant video, the Veritasium video never did sit right with me and I’m glad you included that idea into consideration.
Thanks Scinatical, I think I want to give this another shot, there are some ideas that still don't feel quite right and I want to try some other tests.
Another very interesting video Bruce, thank you!
This was a really great video. Thanks making it. You can tell you put a lot into it. Your videos are always good but I liked this one a lot.
thanks juck
wish we would have teachers like you here in germany :( 😂
keep on, your vids are great 👍
So waren sie früher in Deutschland immer (Vor 1966)
Fantastic video! I really thought I knew what was going on before the video and you completely blew that hypothesis out the water - I LOVE that! A few thoughts on potential experiments next time:
1) using dry sand
2) using tiny metal ball bearings, ideally fine enough that they can 'flow' like the same (but conductive)
3 & 4 intro: someone in the comments suggests that the lorentz force may be coming into effect: the moving charge (in the frame of reference of the dropping water the ruler or balloon is moving) is creating a magnetic field, which, if there is a localised charge induced on one side or the other in the falling water, could create a force. To test that:....
3) water stream going past a magnetic field with no static charge near (I expect would not be deflected - but I got other predictions wrong so good to have a control test)
4) water stream being bent by a static charge on ruler / balloon: then bring in a magnet from a distance and see if that changes the way the water is reacting to the ruler/balloon at all. If the Lorentz force was having a significant impact, one would expect the magnet would disrupt the B field and so have a change on the water behaviour (I really hope I'm wrong and this would show something, as it would be soooo cool to see)
5) This is a long shot, and may show my chemistry is dicey, but to see if the ions are moving from one side of the stream to the others as per 3:41 in the video, could you put in universal indicator. If all the H+ went one side and the OH- went the other, then this should show in the colour of the indicator (orange one side, blue the other), if not it would all stay green. It could be too subtle to see, so perhaps best to use something that would usually be clear, and only show a colour if the ions were being moved around to general a localised H+ or OH- concentration, by memory we had Phenolphthalein in high school.
6) Although it looks awesome, I'm not sure the corn starch in 9:55 would stop the polar molecule from rotating (since A. it's on such a small scale vs the behaviour usually tested with non-Newtonian fluids and B. I think they need to keep this freedom of movement otherwise their specific heat capacity would change, or is that only in gases.... I get distracted) But to try and look at the same thing in a slightly different approach, could you get very finely "crushed" ice? Same idea that the crystal structure should stop the polar molecule rotating. Practically speaking scraping off the white condensate on the inside of a very cold freezer might be the easiest way to get this while minimising the water present.
But any next step experiments you do on this I'm sure would be amazing. Keep up the great job and thank you!! :-D
thanks ColSco Co, In a previous video, I did try it with dry sand and got what I thought were very unexpected results, you can find it here th-cam.com/video/jcoTqhXehDQ/w-d-xo.html
I'm trying to get a Lord Kelvin water drop to work with the sand rather than with the water, so far not working but in theory it should.
I have other videos that I'm working on but I have more that I want to show and try with static electricity, so I am coming back to this I'm adding your suggestions to things to try and hopefully we'll see what happens.
Another great video! Looking at that, a couple of other ideas :-)
a) by adding detergent to the water to reduce surface tension, would the water behave more like the dry sand did in that experiment, ie flying in all directions as the induced charge makes it repel itself and the surface tension is no longer enough to keep the stream together
b) At 7:22 of the other video you link to, you show the metal foils separate due to the induced charge on the sphere resulting in an opposite charge on the foils... Could you use the same approach to test if a induced charge in created on the 'far' side of the water stream: Clamp an insulated charged ball/ruler on one side of the stream (to try and keep the stream as steady as possible), and get a thin metal wire connected at one end to the sphere of that same apparatus, and with the other end of the thin wire, just gently touch the 'far' side of water stream. Let's say the charged ball is PVC (negative), then one might expect the near side of the water stream would be positive, and the far side would be negative. If so, then the far side negative charge would conduct to the apparatus used at 7:22 in the other video, making the foils negatively charged, and the foils should repel
c) realise my suggestion of "dripping ice" in my post above probably isn't particularly practical, but one similar approach could be checking the reaction of a small water balloon suspended on a thread, and an identical water balloon that had been frozen beforehand, where no ions were able to move and (potentially?) the water molecules would be locked in the ice lattice and so unable to rotate their dipole moment. Would probably also need a control of a water balloon filled to the same size with air, to see how much of the reaction force would be due to the balloon itself!
Great study ! Thank you
The answer to the viscous liquids being more attracted and the liquids being way more influenced in its course on the top of the stream is probably that they gain more speed over their fall and the viscous liquids arent able to accelerate as quickly as the "normal" liquids, because of their viscousity. And because of the increasing amount of force needed to change the direction of a moving object, while accelerating (vectorial mathematics), this happens. (Sorry for eventual bad english)
Thanks Jan, I am already planning on another try and taking ideas to try, hopefully the next round will be more definitive, I will take see if we can set up some experiment to test this
I'm looking forward to it :)
*Surface tension* seems to play a role in this experiment. The solid stream of liquid had a higher surface tension than the droplets.
Surface tension is caused by cohesion -- by the attraction to molecules of the same kind. Higher surface tension = higher paramagnetic attraction.
I was think the same as you
I really like you scientific approach on this effect :) I would say the charging is only on the surface :) i hope i'm right.
Bruce, that catch tray got bigger and bigger!!! Amazing results all the same, gets us thinking.
Thanks AussiMatt
Great vid
Hey Bruce. I love doing this
First! Thanks Daniel.
Amazing videos, thanks a lot :)
Wow the oscillating reaction from the oobleck was amazing! Great video though :)
I really enjoyed that part, in fact i will post a short video of just the oobleck in the next day or two
Can't wait for this year!
Me too, I a lot that I want to get to!
thanks sir for making this video
Regarding the vegetable oil: it doesn't matter that the substance isn't polar to begin with. The electric field of what you're holding will polarize the streaming material, and lead to an attraction. The attraction will only stop if the streaming material is very difficult to polarize. I expect no deflection when using table salt.
Most molecules that I'm aware of can be polarized to some degree. The protons simply move one way, and the electrons move the other way, in the presence of an electric field.
I hope I can try table salt soon.
Thanks Antalz, I will go back and try the table salt, I'd like to see what happen
Bruce, great video. Can you make one video on the Kelvin water dropper covering the working principle?
I have one, I'll try to make a video on one it when we get to our unit on electricity with my classes
Gerald Pollack at university of Washington state. 4th Phased water or h3o2. “Exclusion zone” water sits ‘gelled’ at outer edges of any stream. As soon as a drop forms, the exclusion zone thins out and there’s less polarized charge. He wrote a book about many of the experiments he and his students have discovered to show the 4th phase properties. “The Fourth Phase of Water, Beyond Solid, Liquid, Vapor”. I’m sure Gerald would enjoy meeting with you someday.
Does the air around the liquid have an effect on the results? What would happen in a vacuum?
Oh yourre a genius mate, Thank you, you grilled this good. I think I can help.
Higher viscosity increase the effect, experiences a circular field like when something moves in a direction past the earths static charge you see it begins to orbit the earth first and not fall into it, like you see water passing the static of the charged device it attempts to encircle it,.
I love your approach and method! Also, I wonder what you could learn from having the stream of liquid run across wax paper that is attached to an inclined plane. This way the liquid would "fall" slower and yet may still react to the static charge.
Joel, that is a great idea, I will give it a try. thank you
I have seen a number of videos on this and none of the explanations are all that satisfying. I agree that it is probably a combination of explanations. I also wonder if Lord Kelvin's Thunderstorm will provide more insight. I have built one and it works pretty well but I need low humidity for maximum effect. ... Which makes me wonder if humidity effects this experiment as well. I think I need to do some SCIENCE!
Great video as always ! (two of my collegues discovered your channel with me today ! ^^ Everyone wants to stop working on they're thesis and do cool experiments !)
So many questions !! First, I think the influence of the heigth migth just be because of the kinetic energy that the water accumulate during the fall, the static charges become less and less powerful in comparison to the inertia of the drop. But it's just an hypothesis.
isn't vegetable oil very polar ? it's mostly composed of acid and I think they're quite polar.
polarity ranking from most to least:
Amide > Acid > Alcohol > Amine > Ether > Alkane
I think the polarity hypothesis should still be investigated, but the honey is mostly composed of sugars (I think they're non-polar) dissolved in water (polar) but it has a low concentration of water (something around 15% maybe) and we don't see that much of a difference on the experiment... That feeling of mystery is so great !
thanks Ben, everyone needs to take a break now and then but I hope you were able to get your work down. I checked for a listing of common non-polar materials that I had that are commonly available and it said that food oils were non-polar. A lot of this experiment was spur of the moment and I wasn't sure what would happen or why. If you have some additional suggestions I would love to hear them. I was wondering if there is anything that I could find that would be repelled by one charge and attracted by other.
Doing experiments not knowing what to expect is cool, at least you avoid confirmation bias ! ^^
You often find on the internet that vegetable oil is non-polar and that's why it doesn't mix with water because "like dissolve like" but it's not true, polarity of the acid contained is oil is comparable to the polarity of water (measured in Debye unit)
You just need to look at Oleic acid for example (~70% of olive oil) or linoleic acid and you can easily see the molecular structure has no symmetry charge-wise ! Of course "oil" is not an element but a group, so it's risky to say "oil is polar" or the opposite.
You can find videos of things like carbon tetrachloride (which have polar bonds but it's tetrahedral molecular geometry makes it nonpolar by symmetry) that doesn't respond to charged object.
Oh and after researching, the glucose and fructose in honey are very polar molecule. ^^
Thanks Ben, I appreciate your comments, the honey/ syrup were no surprise, parts of this were spur of the moment and I was looking around for nonpolar materials, since it is a middle school classroom I don't have much in the way of chemical supplies and a quick internet search suggested oils. Hopefully I can come back to this again with better testing and more definitive results
Very nice video!
@10:15 behaves differently than other materials. Any idea why it generates a wave as it falls, but others don't?
nice, i like it
This is amazing, i cant understand whats going on at all.
Does the movement of the liquids cause any extra effects? Ex- fast stream to a slow stream. I feel like it would have less reaction if it was just in a bow not moving, also really enjoy the videos!
The only thing that comes to mind, seeng this fantastic scientific approach to the problem, is that induced polarization of the materials, being them liqud, semi-liquind or solid, is responsible of the phenomenon. The experiment can be due also with little pieces of paper on a table, the rubbed plastic would attract them. So, in principle, no need of polar molecules kind of material: oil stream seems to be the demonstration.
cool !.........interesting
Could have an effect that the particles (molecules and ions) are moving respect the vinyl or acetate?
If you did this with some water with an anthocyanin dye in it (say blue butterfly pea tea) would the water change color as it passed through the electric charge?
How much does the increased speed of the flow at the latter stages impact the bend, rather than a bleeding affect? Clearly there'll be much less diversion of a faster stream? Maybe test this with higher water pressures through the tap.
Is it getting its charge from the device it's running out of? It does appear to lose it when the stream breaks.
GodKnowsYou2 That would explain most of the observations. Could you try to make the tip of different materials like teflon and Porcelain?
GodKnowsYou2 This! I was thinking the same thing. Try grounding the container or purposely adding charge too it and see what happens
Good question! Too many experiments to try and not enough time, there is more on this that I'd like to get to, I want to use a VDG generator but it will have to wait as I have some other videos that I'm also anxious to show
I thought it was because of the kinetic energy which increases downwards and becomes bigger than the induced magnetic field
Niemand Wirklich lol could be I is no expert
Just to chip in. Molecules with no net dipole moment, such as hexane, are not deflected by static charge. Vegatable oil is not a very good substitute for this as the molecules of fat are polar. Along these lines it might be worthwhile to experiment with solvents of different dielectric constants. Especially glycerol being polar yet very viscous might prove interesting.
thanks kaviaari, I'm tracking suggestions and plan to give this another try.
I agree with trying hexane or other liquids with no dipole. Great video! I love this channel.
Hexane feels a little dangerous having around objects which might induce arcs with it being flammable but perhaps mineral oil (longer alkanes) would be a safer option for a nonpolar substance. However as you note even nonpolar substances can be polarized and the (static) dielectric contant of vegetable oils of ~3 isn't that much greater than that of hexane ~1.6 when you compare to water with it's value of ~80. Maybe even the timescales of how quickly the polarization propagates dynamically matters as they move though the field quite quickly. Now that I'm back on board with the dielectric theory I'm kinda feeling it's kinda hard to model.
Thanks guys, I do wan to explore this line further but keeping in mind what I can test has to be available in this case to a middle school science classroom. My access to chemicals and equipment is quite limited. I can poke around in the high school chem supply area, not sure what I will find but I will check.
Bruce Yeany You can buy Mineral Oil, USP at a drug store. Non-toxic, difficult to ignite, not too hard to clean up, non-staining. It consists, largely, of linear, saturated alkanes (hydrocarbons). Non-ionic, with a dielectric constant similar to hexane, or other linear, saturated alkanes.
Can you lift an almost horizontal stream of water? Where does the energy for moving all this water come from?
Horizontal stream, interesting, how about an arc going up and then down? thanks Lars
Is the water inside the metal sink head feeling the effect inside the pipe?
What kind of interaction would a statically charged PVC tube's end points have on smoke or water vapor?
Consider "water vapor" and "cloud condensation". With cold dry inflow air -- with an amount of positively charged dust particles -- rushing towards a rising updraft of warm moist air going towards a rotating cloud base with negatively charged ions. What kind of interaction is going on and what kind of influence would static electricity have here?
Sir please solve my doubt sir- which is how the insulator losses and gains the electrons when it is tightly bonded with the nucleus to become charge
If we use a bigger stream of water, it will not become very thin so early and will not divide into droplets. I expect it not to react to the charge. Far from the nozzle water moves too fast. It has too little time to be attracted to the charge. To obtain visible attraction there should be more charged objects along the stream to prolong the influence.
what caused the the corn starch to oscillate like that? was almost as if the static was creating an oscillating eddy current
also what would happen if you poured it through a cylinder / tube? would it spiral?
nemode dj I think it's just because it's a non-newtonian fluid. It'll act much different from water
a non-newtonian fluid is a fluid that resists shear at a nonlinear rate with respect to the fluid's speed, the result is that when you move slowly in the fluid, it moves freely like water, but when you try to move quickly, the fluid "locks up" and feels solid, try making it sometime it's fun to mess with
Bruce do you have a Newton cradle?
Bruce yeany the legend. No mortal soul will ever reach his level of scientific powers.
Also consider that if a rotating column of air with positively charged dust particles reaches a cloud base with negatively charged ions and there is an increase in mass due to an increase in speed of angular momentum, would a funnel cloud develop with this situation?
Try charging the water with an inducer ring as is used with Lord Kelvin's Rain drop generator.
I think the charge made in the plastic, doesn't afect charges in the fluid but it alteres the atoms moving in the fluid, maybe the movement of the atoms in the fluid is altered by the charge made in the plastic
I don't expect this to get read, but vegetable oil as triglycerides may not nonpolar enough to avoid responding to an external charge. When I did this test, I used charcoal lighter fluid, although I would have preferred to use hexane. Either way, it did not respond to a charged balloon. I would suggest trying this.
A little late but it was read, thank you for the suggestion
It seems all materials attract because they are all neutral. Also, your vinyl isn't intrinsically polar, but you can still induce a dipole or charge. That's why a no polar balloon can attract nonpolar hair
But why doesn't it move against the strip if the water isn't running out of the tap? if you try taking the strip near a the top of a glass of water shouldn't it show the same effect?
Edit: Nevermind seems like you adressed a lot more then i expected. Very cool video.
Hi Pavr, the charge on the strips isn't strong enough but in a future video, we'll try it with a much large charge using a VDG generator and we'll get it to move on a large surface of water
It seems to me that the reason for the stream of water bending more at the top than at the bottom is that the water is travelling faster at the bottom so the force from the charge is acting on any given section for less time time and it acquires less impulse.
The reason for the water not deflecting at a distance from the source may be its speed. Speedily moving water deflects less. Like it has gained enough escape velocity.
I wonder if it would work with pitch?
Good question. It's what i love about posting, there are always new ideas suggested.
static electricity got me here, but after three years, why am not still getting answer why/how water bends toward negative or positive charges?
Could the charge actually be contained in the container at the top? And when drops form, the link to the container is broken, so the charge dissipates, and the droplets no longer hold a charge.
Idea: insulate the top container from the stand. Try different types of containers for the materials, or try to discharge any charges on the container by grounding.
👍
11:18 hahaha my fav part
Duh !! glue response, cuz its glue it sticks to thing right :)
Can a static charge be generated in water via particulates rubbing together, such as in highly silty waters in areas of intense wave action?
I could have sworn I read about this phenomenon -- is the fact that lightning does occasionally strike the water evidence for such buildup of charge?
As ocean levels rise, is it likely there will be an increasing amount of cloud to water strikes?
As a result, could it be that larger sections of Earth's surface (via water surface) could be charged at any one time, than was previously the case?
I know I'm just a regular person, but I'm trying to understand something about impact craters. Scientists love to go meteorite hunting in deserts or the Arctic, because that's where you can easily find nice, fresh pieces for analizing. But the major impacts are mostly either in bodies of water, or where water used to be.
I have a suspect rock that was pulled from a crater discovered in a construction cut. Yes, unlikely to be a meteorite. But just humor me a moment, because if it is, it's stucture (one clear attachment point, two somewhat resorbed "siblings") and high salt content speaks of a thing built like a handgrenade made of blobs that had to have blown off a larger piece, that had to have blown off a much more massive piece.
The way the thin melted rock on the surface has been applied with black fusion crust like chat that fla kn es off, suggests that if it is a meteorite, it may have passed through our atmosphere at least 1x before the final melt episode prior to crashing.
Could an increase in Earth's surface and atmospheric charge attract meteors that would otherwise pass harmlessly through our atmosphere like the recent 800 foot one did?
Could such fluctuating charge be the reason for another famous asteroid changing course 3 times (wavy course) as it passed by?
Evey mass generates a graviitational field. An element of that gravity is electrostatic. The part closest water moves slower past the charged mass than the furthest water. The same effect occurs if you put an object very close or even put it in the flow. It orbits around the stationary object because water sticks to stuff. Water only needs to be moving vs some thing it is pasaing to store opposing charges.
I wonder what the relationship is between this demonstration and the Kelvin water dropper (see Walter Lewin's 8.02x lecture 15).
That was a nice effect with the corn starch and water. I wonder if the drops of water when breaking away from the stream act as little electrophori imparting a charge on the above stream? Here's a few other crumbs or points to ponder.
Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation
www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/05/static-electricity-defies-simple-explanation
thanks, good article adding to the idea that it is a lot more complex than we thought
Please the next time try with differents spouts also.
Induction of charge on liquid molecules before it responds to static charge materials . ( try this in Vacuum )
How about liquid nitrogen or liquid oxygen? Or smoke / other gases?
I am collecting ideas for a future attempt on this, I have no idea what liquid nitrogen would do but it would be fun to try
it seems that the static charge is slowing the water down, if one side runs faster then it will bend, eddicurents ?
Bruce can you do a live stream rigth now please please?
no idea how to do it, plus I'm working on getting ready for our first day of school tomorrow
Oh ok and the Magnus effect I did it it works and thanks Bruce and hope you have a good day at work
You can create a molecular vortex with this. Try pumping this as plasma through a vacuum past 6 charge emitters faced in a spiral. Nothing might happen.
Think back to when we would "load" a balloon with a static charge and then place the balloon against the wall. The balloon would "stick" to the wall. Same principle is working here, whatever it may be.
Do you have a Patreon account? I'd love to donate money or send you a microphone so your vocal audio is more clear in your classroom recordings
Thanks Brendan, I realize my equipment needs updating, I use a cheap camera and no input jack for an external mic. I don't have a Patreon account but perhaps I should set one up. Appreciate the offer!
As soon as you get one set up, we'd love to support you! I would have liked to have a teacher like you in high school!
🌷🌹🌷🌹
I just don't buy the dual charged molecule theory. It's my understanding that a water molecule should be neutral or slightly negative but it cannot be positive. However, I reckon hydronium (H3O+) ions are always present in water to some extent by the colliding molecules breaking an atom from the O2 and from the hydrogen also to create an odd number of atoms for each so that for every hydronium ion, a negative oxygen exists and/or bonds to form another negative ion such as HO-. This is my best guess but I can't help but also suspect ionization of the air is playing a part since viscosity is so relevant as opposed to chemical make-up. That being said, if I understand correctly, even neutral substances contain some amount of ions if exposed to the atmosphere.
It seems the slower the material moves through, the more time it's path has to get deflected
I wish to have you as my physics professor, but i'm in italy 😭😭
Bruce I need to ask you something tell me please
With the Magnus effect can I use red party cups? TELL ME BRUCE please?
Absolutely, red works the best!
Thanks Bruce and can you do a live stream today please
Bruce do you have a Newton cradle
The soap looked more responsive to positive charge and the chocolate looked more responsive to negative charge than the other.
One thing you have to remember is that the strips might be charged a different amount each time, you would have to repeat it or control the amount of charge somehow
the thick liquids were kind of a last minute experiment so I didn't get a chance to do much testing. To me it felt like the school glue was by far the most responsive, however it doesn't appear that way in the video.
Bruce needs to do a live streams
Mercury, Gallium, Gasoline? Try those.
Ops I'm here late I was trying to catch a hummingbird
Physics is broken, it doesn't work like the way that Science tries to teach us. You explained the hydrogen atom and why it's attracted to the static charge but then you show two separate streams of water and they cross paths when the static charge is introduced between the two! Opposites attract and two waters shouldn't, the static charge should have tried to bring them together but they should have repelled each other after the charged area. I know exactly what is going on and why but you first have to forget particle physics and rethink everything.
Someone in the past got it perfectly correct but everyone else has misunderstood what he meant and a lot of the scientific knowledge that we are taught today is based on the incorrect understanding of this one little mistake. This is why quantum mechanics makes no sense whatsoever!
I wish that my Science teacher at school was half as good as you! Had this been the case, had I learned only one thing, that would have been to try everything and never stop questioning so that you never stop learning.
You really need a wireless microphone to get your voice nice and clear without echo..
I have the perfect explanation which will not only explain what you are seeing there, but it would also explain everything else. The perfect theory of everything but the book is still in progress.
Better than vsauce
Well, honestly, what isn't?
Ugh. Bruce you ought to know better than to say "just a theory". You mean "just a hypothesis"
I wince when I hear that
Bruce do you have a Newton cradle?
I do, I've had a couple of them. the one I made with pool balls. Also had one where the size the steel balls decreased from one end to the other.
And Bruce can you please please please do a.live stream right now please