Talk:Polywater

Lead
I know it spoils the narrative, but shouldn't pathological science appear in the opener? Wetman 21:09, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

inconsistency
There seems to be an inconsitency in the article. At the beginning, the properties of the hypothetical substance are said to include a "freezing point of &#8722;40 °C or lower, a boiling point of 150 °C or greater". Later, it is said that sweat was found to have the same properties, and that "when subjected to chemical analysis, samples of polywater were invariably contaminated with other substances (explaining the changes in melting and boiling points)". I don't know what sort of contaminations could cause such enormous changes in the freezing point and boiling point, but I'm pretty sure that a) sweat doesn't have these properties and that b) if some contamination were indeed able to produce such properties, it wouldn't take sophisticated chemical analysis to see that the water was contaminated. Fpahl 17:31, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I know it spoils the narrative, but shouldn't too much freaking time on your hands be in the opener?

Via Colligative properties, water can easily be given lower melting point and higher boiling point by the addition of organic solutes. It's just part of the way individual atoms interact in a less ordered fashion. Regular salt in large enough quantities can do this as well, hence why sweat has different properties than water.--Shibbolethink (talk) 17:43, 23 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree with Fpahl that there seems to be an inconsistency in this article. Shibbolethink is technically correct that adding regular salt to water can easily lower its melting point below 0 C. However, the freezing-point depression article says that salty water (such as sweat) will always freeze at around -21 C or above. The freezing-point depression of water from regular salt *cannot* produce a "freezing point of -40 C or lower" mentioned in the article, no matter how much salt is added to the water. --DavidCary (talk) 19:10, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Category
Should this really be in Category:Hoaxes in science? I thought a hoax was more when it is intentional, rather than a mistake, like this... Phlip 14:16, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The Russians really thought they were onto something. Reminds me of cold fusion. --Lyle 04:44, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

In Fiction
Though ice nine from Cat's Cradle and polywater are similar, I'm not sure anybody ever proposed that polywater was self-catalytic as ice nine was in the book.Bjsamelsonjones 16:41, 11 August 2006 (UTC)


 * "A material similar to polywater, Ice-9, also figures prominently in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle." -- I edited this out as Cat's Cradle is already mentioned in the article, and they really aren't the same at all (just one "doomsday scenario" was similar to the ice nine scenario). --24.16.251.40 05:50, 11 September 2006 (UTC)


 * F. J. Donahoe did publish a warning about polywater in 1969, in the journal Nature. He called it the most dangerous material on earth. And speculated that polywater was the reason for Venus missing water. So polywater was speculated as self-catalytic by some. Reko (talk) 12:59, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I wanted to correct the above statement. Concerns or discussions of any 'self catalytic' properties (?) of Ice-9, arise from an unfortunate and bizarre misunderstanding of the term 'HOT ICE'. The Heat comes not from some inherent ability of the substance, but rather the fact that Ice-9, can only exist in extreme pressure at the center of Mega-Planets etc. Where there is high pressure (from the mass of the planet) and variation thereof (from dynamic orbital/gravitational flexing) there is heat! Ice-9 is simply what used to be water but was then somehow trapped (then likely frozen) before being put under extreme pressure as a planet grew around it. It would warm up. It would melt. THEN as the pressure increased, the liquid would be forced to do what we used to think water could not do: COMPACT. It can only do so by reducing any 'unused' space at the Molecular level. Therefore, the water molecules are essentially forced by pressure, to align in the most compact configuration possible, A CRYSTAL is what we usually call this phenomenon in nature. WELL THIS COMPACT CONFIGURATION, HAPPENS TO COINCIDE WITH THE CONFIGURATION OF 4TH PHASE (OR 'CRYSTALINE') WATER! They arrive at their configuration by completely different means, and one is orders of Magnitude more 'compacted', but a Crystalline structure is a crystalline structure, the heat from the pressure concerning Ice-9 is a non-sequiter. Heat and pressure are separate issues, that do not invalidate the simple obvious connection between two substances that have their MOST IMPORTANT and indeed DEFINING TRAIT in common their CRYSTALLINE STRUCTURE! SchoolHomeVR (talk) 11:31, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

New science providing updated info on polywater
UW Professor Gerald Pollack published The Fourth Phase of Water. His science suggests an explanation for what happened in Fedyakin's lab ~50 years ago.

Pollack's science is presented in this new book. He discussed it in the lecture to the UW faculty on 2/24/2008. A recording of that lecture is available on Youtube. That same lecture is available from the University of Washington's Annual Faculty Lectures collection in iTunes U. The book is a better source for info about the Polywater controversy, but I could locate a pertinent quote (with timestamp) from the lecture. I converse with Pollack on e-mail; I can see if other sources are available.


 * Here's a site criticizing Pollack's work as pseudoscience:
 * http://moreisdifferent.com/2015/11/19/debunking-exclusion-zone-water/
 * It's a scientist's personal web site, so it probably doesn't meet WP:RS. However, he lists a number of references that do meet WP:RS and could be used for material discussion the "fourth phase"
 * --168.215.132.201 (talk) 19:09, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Nikolai Fedyakin
Is there any information on Nikolai Fedyakin? Franks writes, "Did Fedyakin move to Moscow to continue his work there? If so, what became of him? It is not easy to find out, because letters addressed to him are never answered," as of 1981. Mcguire (talk) 14:45, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

The Outer Limits
In season 2, episode 11, polymerized water was the reason for a new ice age. But instead of water having a lower freezing temperature, it had a higher one, causing a new ice age. -G — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.31.37.239 (talk) 03:26, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Polywater Gap?
I feel there should probably be a bit more information about why the US was so concerned by the supposed "Polywater Gap". Was it just that the Soviets seemingly had something we didn't, or did they suspect that the substance might actually have some potentially game-changing practical application? Because if such applications were thought to exist, it really isn't made clear in the text what those might have been. BrokenEye3 (talk) 09:57, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

American Polywater Inc.
American Polywater is the largest of several companies that make cable lubricants to reduce friction when pulling power or communications cables through ducts. These products are usually specially engineered mixtures of water with some polymer additives; they have to be chemically compatible with the cable jacket and the duct materials. Cable lubricants are used to install probably 100,000s or millions of miles of underground cable per year. (At our small municipal utility serving 50,000-ish people, we probably install several hundred miles of power cable annually - multiply this by 6000 just for the U.S. -- and that doesn't include many more miles of communications cable for telephone and cable TV companies)

API's product does not use or claim to use the bogus polywater described in this article.

I went to Google their products using "polywater" and the first hit was this article. It could really confuse people making a similar search.

Based on working in this industry for a number of years and the ubiquity of API's products, I'm certain API is notable per WP:N and WP:CORP. That said, a quick search for news articles came up with material for the last year that's possibly marginal by Wikipedia standards (WP:RS)- articles in reliable trade publications but that may or may not have been written by API people (WP:SPONSORED).

I used to be a prolific Wikipedia editor so I'm familiar with Wikipedia's standards. Nowadays I'm just a driveby user that fixes mistakes when I see them. I'm at work and do not have the time or freedom to legitimately prepare an American Polywater stub.

For now, I'm just adding a hatnote to the effect that API is something else.

--166.82.104.10 (talk) 16:46, 10 December 2019 (UTC)


 * More info:
 * These are not "sponsored" articles
 * --166.82.104.10 (talk) 19:08, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
 * These are not "sponsored" articles
 * --166.82.104.10 (talk) 19:08, 10 December 2019 (UTC)