#WaterDestruction #Chemistry #Science #Element
Have you ever wondered if there’s a way to make water disappear completely, without it turning into any other element? Let’s dive into this fascinating question and explore the possibilities of destroying water.
Understanding the Nature of Water 💧
Water is a compound made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, known as H2O. It is a vital substance for life on Earth, playing a crucial role in various biological processes. However, when it comes to destroying water, it’s not as straightforward as you might think.
Breaking Down Water Molecules 🔬
To destroy water, we would need to break apart its molecular structure, separating the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. This process is known as electrolysis, where an electric current is passed through water to split it into its component parts.
However, this method doesn’t destroy water completely; it merely separates it into its constituent elements. The hydrogen and oxygen can be recombined to form water again, effectively creating a cycle of destruction and reconstruction.
Is Water Truly Gone? ❓
Even if we manage to break down water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, these elements can easily combine back together to form water again. This cyclical nature of water makes it challenging to completely eradicate it from existence.
Real-Life Examples 🌍
In nature, water remains a constant presence, cycling through various forms such as liquid, vapor, and ice. Even in extreme environments like deserts or polar regions, water persists in some form, highlighting its resilience and endurance.
Conclusion: The Permanence of Water 💦
While it may be theoretically possible to break down water molecules through processes like electrolysis, water’s inherent nature ensures its continuous presence on Earth. The cycle of water remains unbroken, demonstrating its perseverance and adaptability in the face of destruction.
In essence, water cannot be truly destroyed; its essence will always find a way to persist in some form. So, next time you ponder the idea of erasing water from existence, remember its enduring resilience in the grand scheme of things.
By understanding the complexities of water’s composition and behavior, we can appreciate its significance in our lives and the natural world. #WaterCycle #Chemistry101 #ScienceFacts #ElementalPersistence
If you annihilate it with antimatter then yes, you’d convert it into energy.
If you mean chemically then you can convert water into many other chemicals though they may tend to react and make water again.
Water is destroyed all the time. Water is also created all the time. When you breathe, you take in oxygen (O2) which your body combines with carbohydrates (sugar, C6H12O6), creating carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O) in the process.
Most of the combustion (burning) you witness releases H2O as a side product.
Put water under an electric current and you’ll release hydrogen gas and oxygen gas, destroying the original water.
These things happen all. the. time.
They are not unusual.
Practically? No.
If you want to do it to a miniscule portion you could split the water into oxygen and hydrogen with electrolysis and then use the hydrogen in one of the experimental fusion reactors.
I can never help but think the posters of questions like this have unsettling plans you’re all enabling.
No
The law of conservation of mass states that matter cannot be created or destroyed. The hydrogen and oxygen molecules that make up the water are not able to be “just gone”
One of the most important laws of chemistry is the law of conservation: mass, and energy for that matter, can NOT be created or destroyed, it can only be transferred into different forms. So to answer your question, no. You can not “destroy” water in the sense that poof it’s gone forever. You can however convert it into another form that is no longer water with energy or additional mass – however it may go back to water again. That’s the beauty of the universe we live in!
Nope! Nothing can be nothinged, matter is what matters it is not what it is. “But water can be made into energy” Its still a form aint it?
Water is a molecule composed of two elements, oxygen and hydrogen. It ceases to be water when the oxygen and hydrogen are separated through processes like electrolysis, however the result is an equivalent mass of the elements oxygen and hydrogen. These elements can combine again to form water or other molecules.
Like all matter the elements themselves are very difficult to completely destroy, only break into smaller parts. The only way we have found to destroy matter is to create antimatter, when it touches matter both antimatter and matter are converted into energy. Antimatter is very difficult to create and nobody has ever made it in large quantities. In theory, however, the matter does not cease to exist, it continues to exist as energy.
You could fire it into a black hole and it would be ripped down to some perhaps unknown primordial components, where it would stay till long after all the stars in the universe go dark.
If you leave it in a plastic bottle, you take it out of the water cycle for a few thousand years.
There are several levels of turning water to not water:
Electrolysis. Applying a current through water can split the hydrogen and oxygen apart getting you hydrogen and oxygen gases. They easily recombine back into water with energy input (like a spark) and definitely doesn’t go far enough to meet your “no other element” or “just gone” qualifier.
Fusion. Chuck it into any star and the temperature is plenty high enough to split the hydrogen and oxygen. All stars will fuse the hydrogen into heavier elements and big enough stars will even fuse the oxygen into heavier elements. I’d argue that the water itself is pretty “gone” (you aren’t getting water back) but it definitely involved turning into other elements.
Annihilation. Bring the water molecule into contact with antimatter particles and they’ll annihilate, creating energy. It hasn’t changed into any other element, and it’s super gone. That said, this is a huge simplification because other particles can be produced in the process depending on the initial particles and their energies. When it comes to particle physics and energetic collisions/reactions there’s almost always a chance of particles (subatomic). Many are very short-lived rapidly decaying to other particles or a variety of forms of radiation (or some combination of both).
Matter-antimatter annihilation is probably the only one that goes far enough to qualify for destroy and no turning into any other element. Even then it isn’t “just gone”. It has some byproducts or energetic effects on the surrounding environment.
At work they tell us not to throw the cooling thermite (boutet process of welding rail) into water because the water will absorb heat, 970+ BTUs of heat, convert to steam, then separate into its two parts, and create a hydrogen explosion.
I don’t really understand the Hydrogen explosion bit, but that’s what they told me. I thought it was just a steam explosion from the rapid 1000x expansion of steam, but idk.
Never done this because I don’t want to throw a grenade anywhere near myself.
But the water doesn’t really go anywhere. It just makes a state change to steam. (And maybe undergoes a few quick chemical reactions from the sudden increase in temperature. Can heat of thermite really separate the Ha and Os like electrolysis?)
Please, scientifically literate people expand on this and educate me.
The only ways I can think of are using it for fusion reactions (which only works with heavy water) or taking separating the hydrogen atoms, striping off the electrons and firing them into something with a particle accelerator.
In both cases, some of the water has been converted in a way that is extremely difficult to turn back to water again as you’d have to use a different nuclear reaction to get back to hydrogen again before being able to make water out of it again but they’re also both pretty extreme edge cases
If you’re excluding chemical reactions like elecrolysis (splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen), then your only option really is to annihilate it with anti-water molecules (2 anti-hydrogen atoms bound to an anti-oxygen atom). You’d get a bunch of gamma photons, some neutrinos, and some mesons. But there’s no way to make anything disappear into *nothing* without *something* happening.
Electrolysis. Basically shocking water so hard it turns back into oxygen gas and hydrogen gas
Fuse the hydrogen and ogygen until its all iron, and then I promise it will never ever EVER be water again.
Genuinely curious. What about bottled water that is never opened again? Like the thousands of cases they found in abandoned schools in Flint? They’re still sitting in bottles unopened, thus preventing them from being put back into the water cycle. They aren’t *gone* perse, but no longer included in the cycle…
You can’t “destroy” anything. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed.
The simplest, most practical, way to do what you’re asking is throwing the water into a black hole, this is not easy to do from earth but is something you can do with large volumes of water if you need to (maybe the water is cursed or something?)
The second way is matter-antimatter anihilation. At the moment we are only able to create small numbers of anti-hydrogen atoms that would anihilate the hydrogen in the water molecules you supply, the issue is you’d be left with oxygen that could react with hydrogen again in the future, regenerating the water (it wouldn’t technically be the same water but it would be 8/9 the same as before by mass). So we’d have to invent anti-oxygen generation (this would be incredibly difficult) AND even if we’d succeed we wouldn’t be able to create macroscopic quantities of either because in the process of doing that we’d be creating a lot of antimatter that would anihilate matter it encounters (in our devices), if these are macroscopic quantities in a short time the outcome is effectively a nuclear explosion
Every part of our existence depends on the “destruction” of water. Hydrolysis is a crucial step in photosynthesis. We breathe the waste product, oxygen, and the hydrogen is used to power the processes that plants need to make energy, grow and function. As well as breathing oxygen, we eat plants, or eat animals that eat plants.
So yes, water molecules are often “destroyed”, but only into their constituents, hydrogen and oxygen.
Why would you want to do that?
What do you have against water?
Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Not by us, anyway. Not currently. And some would argue that the equality E=MC2 is proof of that, in that matter and energy are two forms of the same thing. We can obtain/harvest energy from matter by breaking bonds or, in the case of fusion, creating new ones, but the matter mostly remains.
So, a way to destroy the hydrogen and oxygen.
Nuclear fusion and fission definitely do not count, as it’s also transforming the nucleons in another element.
Even if you could destroy the protons and neutrons, that would just release more matter and energy in the process.
Therefore, the answer is no. Nothing in the universe can be “just gone”, it can only transform.
Plants use the energy from sunlight to turn water air into sugar and a different type of air. The water is destroyed in the process.
If we are strictly speaking of conditions on Earth, then it is impossible because the conversation of any CHO molecule to CO2 and water is a very negative delta G. Those two molecules are very stable for j their natural states. They tend not to react into other elements without the input of energy and in many cases the reaction requires a catalyst or enzyme.
End the cycle like end the water cycle on earth?
Evaporate it all way out of the atmosphere