this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
293 points (96.2% liked)

Greentext

7776 readers
1157 users here now

This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.

Be warned:

If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Hupf@feddit.org 3 points 1 hour ago

Anon still lives with his mom and she mopped up the spill.

[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 1 points 45 minutes ago

If water turns into gas at 100 degrees, how come I can pour it into a mug?

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 35 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (2 children)

Enter vapor pressure:

Basically water always evaporates if the air is completely dry, until the air contains a certain amount of water (measured in partial pressure, which is the part of the air pressure that is caused by water vapor). This partial pressure is temperature-dependent, so if you have 20°C (normal room temperature) you're gonna have 23 mbar of water vapor partial pressure in the air. Source

So water still evaporates at lower temperatures when the air is dry enough. It's just that at 100°C ("boiling point of water"), that partial pressure of water vapor in the air increases to 1013 mbar which is equal to the total pressure of the air; In other words, at that temperature in equilibrium, the air is totally made up of water vapor and nothing else. If you increase the temperature above that, the water vapor partial pressure tries to still increase, which makes the total pressure go above normal air pressure, which causes a pressure gradient and causes the air to move with mechanical force, which you can use to make turbines spin.

[–] Danitos@reddthat.com 12 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

A more microoscopic explanation is due to Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution.

First, you need to underestand temperature. The difference between cold and hot water is the average speed at which particles move, with hotter water's particles moving faster.

But this is just the average speed, it turns out that particle's speed can be se en as a random variable, and they follow Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution:

Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution

So you have a small proportion of particles that move very fast, even in cold water. If some of those particles get (or collide with other particles near) to the "layer" of water that is on contact with the air, they will have enough energy to escape water's superficial tension, thus going into the air and out of the water body. The higher the average speed of the particles, the faster this process will go. Finally, the rate at which this process happens also depends on the energy required to be able to leave the water body, which depends on factors like air pressure.

yeah i've of course heard about it and i'm studying physics myself rn so i'll get to it.

I simply haven't taken the course on quantum physics yet so i don't want to make bold claims here. I have yet to derive the classical phenomena from quantum physics myself.

[–] Nindelofocho@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Thank you ive always wondered about this but never wondered about it when I had the chance to look it up and now I know :)

You're welcome :)

[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 10 points 7 hours ago

For fun I'm going to explain why. So air can hold some amount of water in it at any temperature. Water energy in form of heat is not evenly distributed so some molecules move faster than others, at the surface some move fast enough to escape the water and into the air. That's called evaporation, boiling does however require 100°C.

This also explains why humid weather affects evaporation (lower capacity to hold water in air) and at high humidity there's an a similar chance of water being deposited to the body of water as water escaping which affects evaporation speed a lot.

Honestly, I really like this quality of water, it would be super annoying to deal with otherwise.

[–] xep@discuss.online 14 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

It's interesting because very pure water without asperites can be heated above 100c at standard pressure at sea level without boiling. But once impurities are added to it it starts boiling vigorously!

[–] fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 7 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Sounds like the same thing that happens at 0°C with very pure water that stays liquid, but shake it and bam! It insta-freezes.

[–] Kellenved@sh.itjust.works 3 points 7 hours ago

Sometime water bottles display this trait in temps just below freezing. Liquid water in the bottle but break the seal and pop! Frozen

[–] reptar@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

Doesn't have to be pure for that! I've seen it happen with those cheap plastic sleeve popsicles. It's kind of fun flicking them and watching the ice radiate through.

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
[–] xep@discuss.online 7 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Imperfections in the surface of the container the water is in. Sorry, I intended to write 'water in a container without asperites'!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Fleur_@aussie.zone 46 points 12 hours ago (4 children)

Water operates on Celsius so it only needed to be 100 degrees retard

[–] Zozano@aussie.zone 31 points 10 hours ago

Cmon bro, that word is not appropriate, you can say °C instead.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Akasazh@lemmy.world 12 points 9 hours ago

Anon didn't pay attention in physics class.

[–] WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 18 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

The teacher was explaining about conducting and not conducting, and we had a battery with lamp thing to test on various objects. I of course had to test this on a pencil and discovered semi-conducting. That was a serious "not today" sigh from the teacher.

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 8 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

How did that work?
Doesn't pencil lead material just work as a resistor? It's mostly graphite and clay, and shouldn't have the required structure to work as a semi-conductor.

Ahh right. I had forgotten about how to term "semi-conducting" was used back in elementary, thanks to semiconductors and the lot.

[–] WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 5 points 8 hours ago

In my case it gave off a few sparks at the contacts what really makes it interesting for young me.

[–] Nikelui@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago

Everything is a conductor if your generator has a high enough frequency.

[–] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 80 points 17 hours ago (4 children)

this feels like a potentially sincere attempt to recruit people into an anti-science conspiracy movement - this doesn't really feel different than the kind of reasoning you see with moon landing denialists or flat earthers.

[–] Syndication@lemmy.today 95 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (3 children)

Eh I wouldn't take it too seriously, I'm pretty sure it's a play on the whole running joke of "saying something ridiculous, then end it with 'You guys don't seriously believe this right?!?'" type of thing. I've seen many of these greentexts that used that format recently.

It's kinda funny to me because it loosely reminds me of same logic as those old rage comic "troll physics" memes like these:

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 5 hours ago

And /r/the_donald was just a joke

[–] toynbee@lemmy.world 10 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Syndication@lemmy.today 4 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

I just realized I called myself old too :(

2012 was only 7 years ago, right?

[–] toynbee@lemmy.world 5 points 6 hours ago

2012 is at least 11 years in the future, I'm pretty sure.

[–] pticrix@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 hours ago

It was seven years ago, seven years ago.

[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 21 points 16 hours ago
[–] ulterno@programming.dev 2 points 8 hours ago

Nah. I remember back in high-school there were some who "disproved" the 3rd law of motion by pushing a door closed and saying that they didn't go backwards.
I didn't care to engage them in debate.

[–] village604@adultswim.fan 40 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (3 children)

It's actually not a bad question, just one people don't really think about. Why does room temperature water ~~sublimate~~ evaporate?

It's because the temperature is an average, and some molecules at the surface have enough energy to break their polar bonds.

[–] wolfpack86@lemmy.world 21 points 10 hours ago (4 children)

Water doesn't sublimate. Sublimation is solid to gaseous phase change.

[–] Tinidril@midwest.social 1 points 7 hours ago

Technically, water does sublimate, just not at normal earth pressures. Below 0.6 kPa it transitions straight from solid to gas.

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 1 points 8 hours ago

Yeah, evaporate would be the appropriate word here, while sublimate would be for room temperature ice, which I don't know if it is ice that does it or if there is a microscopic film of water that then evaporates.

[–] anothercatgirl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 10 hours ago

sublimation is poorly defined in our context.

[–] naught@sh.itjust.works 21 points 15 hours ago

Pretty sure Bill Nye taught me this. Substitute teachers aren't playing the good stuff anymore

[–] Hideakikarate@sh.itjust.works 17 points 15 hours ago

I wanna say Bill Nye had a little contraption that explained this phenomenon. A cup with a piston on one end that vibrated. The top part of the cup had a ring in the center where little balls in the cup could fit. The piston represented the temperature (energy). Even at a lower temperature, some balls could randomly fly into the little hole and into the other partition. Turning the temperature up (increasing the speed and power of the piston) made more balls more frequently "evaporate." I wish I could find that demonstration again.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 8 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Im a lifelong flat earth denier

[–] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 4 hours ago

flat earth is pushed by the global elite pedophiles, after all - it's what they want us to believe

[–] RisingSwell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

The oceans aren't carbonated therefore flat earth

[–] PrincessTardigrade@lemmy.world 3 points 10 hours ago

Not carbonated enough yet

[–] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 25 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

matter changes state based on temperature

This is a gross oversimplification and your experiment proves that :)

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 24 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Water doesn't need to boil to dry out.

Obviously it's just losing wetness over time.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 10 points 12 hours ago

Many hikers pack dehydrated water on long camping trips. Just add water to rehydrate it and drink!

[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 33 points 16 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Zozano@aussie.zone 4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

How long has Sam Harris been a mermaid?

[–] Lumidaub@feddit.org 1 points 7 hours ago

Since his dad was the Special Ambassador to Hollywood.

load more comments
view more: next ›