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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“Wet”, like “funny”, “beautiful”, “delicious”, “bright”, “hot”, “spicy”, "soft’, “hairy”, “clean”, “malleable” are subjective, context specific, descriptors. You can’t describe how many hairs makes something hairy: three hairs on a bowl of ice cream is hairy, but the opposite on a human head.
Your argument is based on water as a substance, not as a molecule
Water cant be just a molecule, as the relationship between molecules of a substance at different temperatures is what makes something a solid, liquid, gas, or plasma. Water is the liquid state of H2O, and thus one molecule of that would just be a single H2O
You know what else dries up? Water.
That’s just the H2O changing phase to gaseous, it doesn’t stop existing. I’d personally classify humidity as “wet”, as would most people I’ve met, so it’s still wet after “drying”
If you put water and oil in a container and they separate, the interface between them is not wet.
Humid air can make things wet, but that only happens when the moisture in the air condenses onto a solid surface. Humid air will not make the surface of a lake wet even though water is condensing out of the air onto that surface.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’m confused, how does any of this help me determine whether that dude is a skilled lover or not?
sadly my wife isn’t on lemmy so we will never know
“Wet”, like “funny”, “beautiful”, “delicious”, “bright”, “hot”, “spicy”, "soft’, “hairy”, “clean”, “malleable” are subjective, context specific, descriptors. You can’t describe how many hairs makes something hairy: three hairs on a bowl of ice cream is hairy, but the opposite on a human head.
Water cant be just a molecule, as the relationship between molecules of a substance at different temperatures is what makes something a solid, liquid, gas, or plasma. Water is the liquid state of H2O, and thus one molecule of that would just be a single H2O
That’s just the H2O changing phase to gaseous, it doesn’t stop existing. I’d personally classify humidity as “wet”, as would most people I’ve met, so it’s still wet after “drying”
I’d say wet and dry are relative terms here but ultimately, yes, you and I are in agreement that water is wet.
is a cloud wet?
a cloud is (basically not exactly) “steam” - steam makes things wet when it condenses into water
(clouds of water on Earth at least, not Venusian clouds of Sulphur for eg)
The word you might be looking for is vapor.
Clouds are water vapor.
yes but I didn’t want to get dragged into whether vapor was wet.
It’s not solid, so no. It’s humid.
does that also classify as moist?
Yes, moist can mean humid.
Water (and other liquids) make solid things wet.
If you put water and oil in a container and they separate, the interface between them is not wet.
Humid air can make things wet, but that only happens when the moisture in the air condenses onto a solid surface. Humid air will not make the surface of a lake wet even though water is condensing out of the air onto that surface.
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?
If there are*
And they both get wet, since they’re both touching other water molecules. As goes for any other number above one. All of this is very obvious.
Thank you for this. I need more people to be on board with this explanation.
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
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