From Frankenbike (June 30):
So if you were in outer space, and you fired a stream of water out of the space shuttle, it would immediately vaporize?
From Aquarius (July 1):
frankenbike wrote:Aquarius wrote:
So if you were in outer space, and you fired a stream of water out of the space shuttle, it would immediately vaporize?
Since the space shuttle doesn't go beyond earth orbit, the approximate temperature outside it when orbitting would be about -269 degrees C. Water freezes at this temperature, at any pressure. It in fact forms what is referred to as Ice-Eleven or Ice-XI, a very low temperature form what we put in our cold drinks.
This would actually be a neat process, as the instantly frozen water would travel virtually at the same velocity at which it was fired until an outside force acted on it, all while orbiting of course.
:suspicious:
From iSoaker.com (July 1):
^ though cold, as there is extremely low atmospheric pressure at the altitude of the shuttle, it still may be warm enough to boil the water (though I'm not 100% sure about that). There'd be an interesting balance between water cooling upon exiting the nozzle, the desire for water to boil since there is almost no atmospheric pressure, and the rate at which water froze due to the low temperature. Heat capacity versus thermal loss versus boiling point depression... my head hurts.
From Aquarius (July 1):
isoaker_com wrote:^ though cold, as there is extremely low atmospheric pressure at the altitude of the shuttle, it still may be warm enough to boil the water (though I'm not 100% sure about that).
Orbitting the sun maybe. Around Earth however, -269 C is far too cold. Take a look at a phase chart for water. You'll notice that at around -78 C or lower, water exists ONLY in solid form at ANY pressure. You could shoot near boiling water and it would make little if any measureable difference.
From iSoaker.com (July 1):
Take a look at a phase chart for water. You'll notice that at around -78 C or lower, water exists ONLY in solid form at ANY pressure.
Ok.. my bad for poor description of my thoughts. Yup, water when it's cold, is solid. However, there'd be a transition time between the pressurized water leaving the nozzle and the time it takes for it to freeze. Assuming the nozzle doesn't get clogged, would the water chill fast enough to become a solid stream or would it boil first, thus freeze as spreading mist particles? Of course, this is really off topic.
From Aquarius (July 1):
isoaker_com wrote:Ok.. my bad for poor description of my thoughts. Yup, water when it's cold, is solid. However, there'd be a transition time between the pressurized water leaving the nozzle and the time it takes for it to freeze.
Sure, and the warmer the water originally the longer it would take for it to freeze. This would only be fractions of seconds though.
Assuming the nozzle doesn't get clogged, would the water chill fast enough to become a solid stream or would it boil first, thus freeze as spreading mist particles?
This would depend alot on the type of nozzle used. A laminar stream would render rigid, though broken, columns of ice. An aquastorm type nozzle would make droplets of ice, with a riot blast making an assortment of frozen droplets, chunks, and ice "vapor".
Of course, this is really off topic.
Maybe not. Wasn't Super Soaker's inventor a NASA engineer at some point?
From iSoaker.com (July 1):
Maybe not. Wasn't Super Soaker's inventor a NASA engineer at some point?
Uh.. this thread is about building a homemade CPS system, not soaker or water physics in general.
As for columns of ice from a laminar flow, I'm not so sure that'd necessarily be the result. For sake of argument, I'd place the starting water at 4C (cool to us, but much warmer than ambient orbital temperature). Suddenly dropping both external temperature and pressure, part of me would say there could be an intial boiling event since the heat-capacity of water would prevent it from suddenly freezing, but at that pressure, it'd still be warm enough to boil. Everything would be occurring in fractions of a second timescales, of course, but it may be enough to ruin the laminar flow of the stream, thus making it spread a lot more after exit from the nozzle than it would if it were just that cold, but pressurized at 1 atmosphere.