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It’s the little things
(lemy.lol)
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this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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i think without surface tension it would also just fall out of the cloth as soon as you lift it, because nothing would wick against gravity. in fact of your floor is pourous at all, i reckon the water would just immediately all flow further down and you’d be left with a dry floor.
Oil doesn’t have surface tension and it stays in the cloth. At a certain point it’s not surface tension that keeps liquids together but friction.
Says my uneducated ass.
oils have low surface tension, i believe a true no-surface tension liquid is as impossible as a true frictionless surface.
i didn’t consider friction though! i think the rag would still dry out completely pretty quick, but you might have a few seconds while the water falls out depending on how tight the mesh is?
i dunno, this is a real whacky thing to think about!
Without surface tension it would stick to whatever thing attracts it more. And a normal piece of cloth attracts water way more than a normal non-carpet floor.
But it also wouldn't flow freely as the GP expects either. Some oils have almost no surface tension, and they are famously a nightmare to clean up.
As a positive, the water would evaporate faster.
the cloth attracts it because of the capillary action pulling water into the gaps therein, and capillary action relies on surface tension! i think without outside forces like suction, the liquid in this scenario would never flow against gravity.
i think hahah
Surface tension doesn't tell you anything about the cloth-water interface.
late reply but i ONLY JUST CONSIDERED, the cloth would most likely have some static charge which WOULD result in a literal “attraction force” towards the water!
physics is so stupid, i love it so much
i mean it’s literally why liquids wick into cloth