this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Wwweeeeeeeellllllll see, water is also touching itself constantly. Something being wet is a material surrounded by water, like the fibers of a sponge surrounded by water, in example.

In water, every water molecule is surrounded by water molecules. This means every given water molecule can be considered wet. And this water is wet.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

If I have a single water molecule then it is still water but it isn’t touching any other water molecule, thus it isn’t wet

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Well no one would consider something with a single water molecule on it wet either.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Yup, that further confirms what I said

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Exactly. So the only instance water is dry, and thus not wet, is if it's a single lonely molecule.

But water tends to come in herds, so that basically never happens.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

Oh please someone argue this with me!

I love semantic bs!

Water is touching water, so therefore water is wet!

Not that Thomas isn't a piece of shit regardless.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

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

Wetting is the ability of a liquid to displace gas to maintain contact with a solid surface, resulting from intermolecular interactions when the two are brought together.[1] These interactions occur in the presence of either a gaseous phase or another liquid phase not miscible with the wetting liquid.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Fair enough. I was not expecting something I could not understand

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Basically, the process of making something wet requires a liquid (usually water) to actually stick to it, through intermolecular forces. That's slightly more narrow a requirement than the "needs to touch water" that's commonly thrown around. A lotus flower or water repellent jacket doesn't get wet, even if you spray water on it, the droplets don't actually stick to the surface.

Now, water molecules stick to each other as well, that's called surface tension. But wetness, at least in physics, is defined at an interface between two mediums, a liquid and a solid, or two liquids that don't mix

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago

I learned something new today

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

More reasonably, "wet" is often used as an adjective describing something that is liquid. Wet paint is, of course, wet.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 hours ago (4 children)

Saying water is wet because it touches water sounds like "Fire is on fire because it touches fire". It just sounds fundamentally illogical as you're talking about a state of matter, not the matter itself.

I'm not a scientist, just throwing in my view on this

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 hours ago

Simply superior

[–] [email protected] 30 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I had no idea that a lake could be so saucy with the comebacks. Glad to hear that it lives up to its name.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 hours ago

well it is superior

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

Damn, for a lake bragging about making things wet that was some sick burn.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 13 hours ago (4 children)

A single molecule of water is not wet but as soon as more then one molecule is present the water is then wet. That is my hill to die on in this argument.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

Wetting is an actual physical process that occurs between a liquid and a solid, or two unmixable liquids:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetting

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 hours ago (5 children)

I disagree. Mixing water and another liquid does not make the second liquid "wet" - it makes a mixture. Then if you apply that mixture to a solid the solid becomes wet until the liquid leaves through various processes and becomes dry. If that process is evaporation, the air does not become wet it becomes humid.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (3 children)

I mean. The molecule itself isn't a solid or liquid, that has to do with the behavior of the molecules in dimensional space. Your argument is based on water as a substance, not as a molecule, completely avoiding the basis of their argument.

Besides that, most liquids you could easily mix with water are themselves water-based and therefore would be totally dried up into a powder or perhaps a jelly without their water content. To add water is to make them wet, and then they exist as a wet incorporated substance. As liquid substances. In fact, they could not dry up if they were not wet in the first place; to become dry is to transition away from the state of being wet.

You know what else dries up? Water.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Those things are mostly true yes but we're talking about the function of the adjective wet in language and the phenomenon of wetness as a linguistical descriptor and livable experience. Obviously things are wet, it's an incredibly common and useful term, but it probably does elude rigid classification and all you're going to get are opinions because there's no way to rigidly define it. It's a "heap problem" there isn't a specific point where something becomes a heap, but yet you can heap thing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

You sure bailed from your entire argument pretty darn quickly to now argue "there's no way to rigidly define it." There is. It's "wet." It behaves in the way wet things do. There's no reason to say otherwise than to be contrarian. The only way to argue otherwise is to create a strict definition of wetness, as you just have, which ultimately fails when put up against reality and a more human use of language.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

I'm confused, how does any of this help me determine whether that dude is a skilled lover or not?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

If there is two molecules of water which one is the dry molecule and which one is the wet molecule?

If there are three molecules does one get divided in half to make the other two wet or does only one get wet and one stays dry until a fourth arrives?

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