Hacker News Reader

Comment by djrogers | Hacker News Reader

Apparently one can make dry water with a blender - mix fine silica powder and water in a 1:19 ratio (by mass) and put it in a blender for a few minutes.

I'm not going to risk my blender to try it, so who's first?

View on HN

Blenders can be replaced. I would worry more about silicosis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicosis

Should be ok unless you're making dry water as a daily job.

"Water dust. Don't breathe this!"

Or pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. Been waiting for 25 years to use that word seriously. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilico...

You've just unironically and contextually used what's currently the longest recognized word in the English language in an unforced manner.

There has to be a prize for this.

I'm sure it gets used at dry water research meetings all the time.

Only the ones with a sense of humour.

I hear they prefer deadpan dry humor.

cough

For a minute, I thought I was on Reddit.

Please no. Reddits pun threads contantly derail interesting discussions with low effort shit.

Agreed. I’m a little envious.

This made my day, sir. The wikipedia article was interesting but this . . . chef fingers

Glad to see the fun police are still out in force here.

My guess would be the "sir" is what triggers. It reads very weird, has a bad link to the stereotypes who would use the word today, and the assuming of gender.

"TimTheTinker", I think it's a fair assumption.

The guidelines ask this:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

FWIW I've also seen the topic come up on the other side, when commenters have used non-traditional pronouns.

"Assume good faith" seems reasonable here, given that the root commenter was merely being very enthusiastic with their praise.

I could have gone with Madam Tim but I worried it would be too formal.

Listen, I have been on this site from the beginning and I appreciate the generally no bullshit tone. I left reddit back when it became clear that HN was the clear successor of the reddit I used to know but killjoy bullshit like parsing "sir" is not what I'm here for either.

if useless quips are fun then maybe the appropriate venue is elsewhere?

Pointless quips add something else we have to scroll past to learn anything or find something interesting. The goal is more wheat not more chaff.

"this was interesting" can be accomplished by upvoting.

I think HN should be able to eschew lame attempts at Reddit-style humour whilst still welcoming good-natured enthusiastic praise!

Was it pointless? Who doesn't like to hear something pleasant said about, oh, I don't know 25 years of knowing a fun word and getting to use it in context. If praise for that bugs you then you need to find some joy in your life, because I can assure you you're wasting your time right now.

So what is the scrabble score for that word?

68 apparently.

It's far too long to fit on a Scrabble board.

My first grade teacher taught the class that word as the longest in the English language. I remember it to this day.

This was 40 years ago but we were taught: Antidisestablishmentarianism

Hm. I like this one. It feels more like one single word, and not just several long words written without spaces

It’s multiple prefixes and suffixes around “establish”.

Supercalifragilisticpneumonoultramicroscopics?

I'm kind of upset that you beat me to it...I guess I'll have to wait another 25 years...

Or a new disease we'll discover after dumping dry water into rivers and oceans and later drinking it.

I really wish they used that on the warning labels on the stone slabs I work with every day. It just sounds so much more extreme and terrifying than silicosis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respirator

That can be easily avoided though. 1) Do it outside or in a well ventilated area. 2) Wear a mask. Extra precaution) Change clothes when done.

Hm, and these are nanoparticles too, right? They could conceivably pass into all kinds of tissues and end up in unexpected places. Silica is pretty inert, but I’d still be leery.

The only video I could find of the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVAPUxSH_6Q

I'd like to see someone interact with it - is it possible to get "wet" from dry water? Can you get the water back out?

Imagine you could press it through a filter of appropriate size to block the silicate but permit the water ?

Maybe a centrifuge might separate the two?

That gives an useful keyword to search for, "Aerosil". Finds among other stuff this document, which describes various uses of this silica stuff: https://glenncorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Aerosil_Sip...

Very fascinating peek to behind the curtain of cosmetics industry. The "dry water" stuff is in the last pages. Apparently their advertised "powder to cream" cosmetics are popping up in the market. They have a demo video of the stuff, but in that it doesn't seem to work all that well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmQTOU1KBkw

The commercial products using it (or similar stuff) seem to work fine though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QURu28QTlMU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Bcyo4GmrY

(and now youtubes algorithms will be confused why I'm suddenly looking at makeup videos at the middle of night)

I can't imagine it would hurt a blender. Aerosil is an extremely fluffy, almost airy, material that has some interesting physical properties on its own. It's dirt cheap to buy (around $6 a gallon - http://www.uscomposites.com/fillers.html). I use it fairly regularly - it's a thixotropic agent for epoxy resins.

I've actually tried this, but due to long-chain reactions in the molecular bonds I ended up with a mixture that was around 20% Bumcivilian by volume. I couldn't hear a thing for 20 minutes, so be careful.

Sounds like you got the reaction wrong. If you do it correctly, it should be possible to mafipulate it into powered embenzalmine nitrotamine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com