this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
1259 points (100.0% liked)
People Twitter
7242 readers
1051 users here now
People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
- Mark NSFW content.
- No doxxing people.
- Must be a pic of the tweet or similar. No direct links to the tweet.
- No bullying or international politcs
- Be excellent to each other.
- Provide an archived link to the tweet (or similar) being shown if it's a major figure or a politician.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
But that's not the definition of wet. Wet is something having liquid adhere to it, usually water. It's a gained quality. Water doesn't adhere to itself, it can't gain the quality of being wet because it is the thing that gives that quality. It's like saying that fire is burnt. It does the burning.
Water literally adheres to itself. That's one of its most important qualities.
Since heat is thermal energy, it can transfer this thermal energy but it loses some due to the second law of thermodynamics. Water doesn't lose the ability to adhere to other things when it transfers, so the two phenomenon are not really equateable.
Fair enough, heat can't lose heat. However when it interacts with a substance some of the energy is "lost" in that it transfers to the substance. Unless it is a completely inert material.
Can you hold a unit of heat? Or do you hold a substance that is imbued with heat energy? Seems like a good reason to say the two are not equateable, which was the main point.
Other than that, a specific fields definition of wet does not make the term exclusive to that field. In aquatic science, wet still means something that water is adhering to. Water adheres to itself so water is wet.
Heat is indeed hot.
Water is cohesive which means yes, it does attach to itself. It's one of the main reasons capillary action works and your blood flows the way it does.
obviously not a lot of blood flow going on in this thread
Actually fire is the byproduct of a chemical reaction. The material being combusted is the one doing the burning. Fire (rather, extreme heat) can cause combustion in other materials, given an oxygen rich environment, but the fire is not itself doing the combustion or burning.
Wetness is not a chemical reaction, so it's kind of an apples to oranges comparison.