How the curling ice in Beijing was made for the Olympics | Hacker News Reader

How the curling ice in Beijing was made for the Olympics

nytimes.com

9 pointsbasilesimon15 comments

I can't read the article. They are using probably demineralized water and not distilled water, because the process is easier and cheaper. Anyway, in both case Wikipedia doesn't say it will burn your throat:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distilled_water#Health_effects

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purified_water#Mineral_consump...

Two things that weren’t obvious to me until I started playing:

1. The ice conditions make a huge difference and are a bit different every game, every sheet, and from start to end of a game.

2. Every stone is subtly different and to play exceptionally well you eventually learn to keep track of the characteristics of each one.

https://archive.is/BeUM2

The article doesn't explain why pure water will burn your throat, unfortunately.

I’m no chemist, but it’s likely just deionized water. It can irritate your mouth and throat since the ion-dipole force in water makes it electrostatically attract ions, and can likely pull them from the cells on the surface of your mouth/throat. I don’t fully know if that’s the reason it would burn because I don’t remember how strong these forces actually are, but if I remember correctly it’s dependent on the ion and the difference in charge.

I can't imagine it would. You can drink distilled water for instance, with no ill effects other than it not tasting very good at all.

Pure water definitely will. A YouTuber did a video on it, and he tasted a very small amount. At first he didn't think there was a problem, but then he added to the end of the video to NOT do it because indeed, he burnt the crap out of his tongue with just the tiny amount he sampled.

We learned about this in grade 10 science class. You'll lose a layer of skin.

Here's the MSDS for distilled water. http://erjair.com/MSDS/Distilled%20Water.PDF

This is about as calm as MSDSs get, note that it doesn't have any warnings about...anything really.

Besides which, I've drunk a small cup of it. No ill effects except it just tastes bad.

I think youtuber pranked you.

Distilled water and pure H2O are not the same thing.

Pure Water Can Kill You http://isciencemag.co.uk/features/fact-of-the-day-1/

That article is...suspect. Water poisoning is a thing, but it's a thing with normal water too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication

As with everything, the dosage is important and the article doesn't mention it being any different than normal water.

This is simply not true

Here is a WHO report, off that you can jump to animal studies etc etc etc

https://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutrientscha...

Maybe some of the minerals in water are good for you, and there's things around satiety.... But since all water is different it's only if you are really poor might this might matter. You should not be relying on random water for your micro-nutrients.

OK, don't do it for 20 years without more research, but it will not burn you. I don't know what The Action Lab did, but here's National Geographic doing it in a professional lab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMh1lyeNsPc

Distilled water tastes amazing to me.

Osmotic pressure. Same reason why it is a bad idea to swim in Super-Kamiokande. The older experiment IMB eventually failed because the ultra pure water attacked and breached the liner separating it from the ambient salt.

clickbait.. Water has a low pH when you remove all soluble minerals. However, w/o minerals it has no buffer capacity and pH will raise very easily. therefore it is not going to actually burn you.

> the deputy ice technician for the curling events, said, “it would burn your insides.”

Simply not true at all.

Quora can explain how water is not dangerous to you (remember when it was Yahoo Answers)

It might taste different to what you expect... if you haven't drunk pure water before.

Also doubt they get it to lab level. And I would expect air is the problem not impurities, but not sure, probably related, impurities create air bubbles?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com