Episode 138: Why Is This Wet?

What does it mean to be… wet? Hey. Mind out of the gutter. This episode is about the idea of wetness— are all liquids necessarily wet? What’s the driest liquid? What qualifies something to be wet?

First off, we opened by just talking about whether or not humans can even sense wetness. The answer might surprise you.

Then we really needed to define, scientifically, what being wet even meant. What is the scientific definition of “wetting?”

So based on that scientific definition of wetting, is water wet? The answer is actually kind of complicated. This article does a good job of explaining the wetting process and how water wets but isn’t really wet itself and what other liquids do a better job of wetting than water.

This is just the wikipedia about Superfluid Helium, which is the best at wetting because it has literally nothing making it bead up on anything and just spreads out for a long time.