• Question: How does water purity affect surface tension?

    Asked by anon-200869 to Rosemary, Oliver, Leigh, Jordan, Hannah, David on 10 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: David Walker-Sünderhauf

      David Walker-Sünderhauf answered on 10 Mar 2019: last edited 10 Mar 2019 9:32 am

      I’m not really sure about the answer to this, but it reminds me of one of the first cool experiments I came across as a kid: fill a glass with water, and float a paperclip on top of it. Then add a few drops of washing-up liquid to the water and see what happens 🙂
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      based on the results of this, my guess is that impurity in water disrupts the surface tension, but it probably also depends on *what* the impurities are!

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