Can a drink get more wet? [Solved]

Shinyshark

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Hey everyone, thought I'd just post this. We've continued our discussion after the meeting. The question was: "Can a drink get more wet?"

The answer is no, a drink can not get more wet. A drink can only increase or decrease in quantity, but this does not increase or decrease wetness of that drink. The fact that the drink is wet is a description. It is either wet or it is not.

This is a binary approach to the question at hand. It's either 0 or 1, there is nothing that is in between. However, you cannot say that a drink is either wet or it is not. Something is a drink when it is wet. If you can drink it, it is wet. Anything that you can consume but that is not wet is not a drink.

Now I know that that sounds illogical. But look at it this way; if you eat a hamburger and you also 'eat' the fat juices then you have not eaten a drink. You have eaten a hamburger and you have drank the juices. The combination of the two make the earlier statement seem false, it is however not.

Based further on the binary approach; something is either wet or it is not. There is no grade of wetness. You cannot say "this is rarely wet" or "this is really wet" because the only difference is the quantity of the wetness There is actually no difference in quantity because it is either wet or it is not. If you have a moist towel, it is wet. If you have a drenched towel, it is wet. The moist towel is wet, the quantity of wet is smaller than the drenched towel. That is actually wrong. Like I said, it is either wet or not.

The same goes for a drink. A drink can not get more wet, a drink can only increase or decrease in quantity meaning that the quantity of the wetness in the drink is the same but present in a higher dosis.
 

cheatyface

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Hey everyone, thought I'd just post this. We've continued our discussion after the meeting. The question was: "Can a drink get more wet?"

The answer is no, a drink can not get more wet. A drink can only increase or decrease in quantity, but this does not increase or decrease wetness of that drink. The fact that the drink is wet is a description. It is either wet or it is not.

This is a binary approach to the question at hand. It's either 0 or 1, there is nothing that is in between. However, you cannot say that a drink is either wet or it is not. Something is a drink when it is wet. If you can drink it, it is wet. Anything that you can consume but that is not wet is not a drink.

Now I know that that sounds illogical. But look at it this way; if you eat a hamburger and you also 'eat' the fat juices then you have not eaten a drink. You have eaten a hamburger and you have drank the juices. The combination of the two make the earlier statement seem false, it is however not.

Based further on the binary approach; something is either wet or it is not. There is no grade of wetness. You cannot say "this is rarely wet" or "this is really wet" because the only difference is the quantity of the wetness There is actually no difference in quantity because it is either wet or it is not. If you have a moist towel, it is wet. If you have a drenched towel, it is wet. The moist towel is wet, the quantity of wet is smaller than the drenched towel. That is actually wrong. Like I said, it is either wet or not.

The same goes for a drink. A drink can not get more wet, a drink can only increase or decrease in quantity meaning that the quantity of the wetness in the drink is the same but present in a higher dosis.
But if the drink were partially frozen, then it would be partially not wet. Binary is an unacceptable approach to this situation. The real question is what state is the drink in? If it's entirely liquid, then no it can't. If it's partially solid, then it can.
 

RyanDodd

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This is false. Take mud for an example. It is wet when water is freshly added to dirt but as it hardens a bit it becomes less wet, yet still drinkable. I am too tired to explain it and will probably make a larger response tomorrow.

EDIT: I hate that different 'approaches' such as the binary one mentioned above outweigh common sense and logic. Instead of calculating all of that crap, just think about it. You have a brain for a reason.
 

Malcovent

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All hinges on the definition of "wet", for example

Oxford Dictionary - covered or saturated with water or another liquid
vs
Wiktionary - Of an object, etc, covered with or impregnated with liquid.
vs
Wiktionary - Made up of liquid or moisture.

Arguably with both definitions something can become more wet the more saturated/impregnated with liquid it is - for example if i take powdered milk and add a few drops, it can technically be a drink but its going to far 'wetter' by that definition if i add an entirely glassful of water, cases being
  • It will flow better
  • If i were to spill it it would soak in faster
  • It will be more 'liquid' than solid.
Following both above definitions and the above logic, it is more "wet". I may be winging it but i suspect the term "drink" undermines the argument, since most drinks minus water are something else with liquid added. The ratio of the "something else" vs "the liquid" will, according to the above interpretations, change how wet it is.

There's a handful of arguments vs it but i imagine most seem to fail at trying to distinguish between a thick milk powder + low water solution and a cup of water ~ which arguably would also feel different in terms of "wetness" to the touch, but are both, ultimately drinks.
 

cheatyface

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Alright, all I'm saying is that a drink is a consumable liquid. Thus, it's already wet if it's a liquid. So it cannot get wet. It's as simple as that, unless I'm missing something.
Does your drink with ice in it become not a drink?

Why are we arguing about this again?
Because SCIENCE!

There's a handful of arguments vs it but i imagine most seem to fail at trying to distinguish between a thick milk powder + low water solution and a cup of water ~ which arguably would also feel different in terms of "wetness" to the touch, but are both, ultimately drinks.
Powdered drinks are a perfect example, I think. Wetness can certainly come in measurable degrees.

Now, the ultimate question...

Do you drink or eat soup?
Why not both though?
 

RyanDodd

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So, not that anyone would drink mud, but it is still a liquid and therefore counts as a drink! But add water to dirt and you get wet mud. Almost the consistency of water. Let it sit for a a while and you have a think mess that is less wet, yet still drinkable.
 

crashb23

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If you add a surfactant, such as soap detergent to water, it lowers the surface tension to the point where it can flow farther and penetrate deeper into substances without beading up. Although this doesn't follow the definitions of wetness GMK supplied, this process is actually known in the chemistry world as making the water "wetter"
 

GmK

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If you add a surfactant, such as soap detergent to water, it lowers the surface tension to the point where it can flow farther and penetrate deeper into substances without beading up. Although this doesn't follow the definitions of wetness GMK supplied, this process is actually known in the chemistry world as making the water "wetter"

The expert in moistness is Malcovent, not me...
 

Shinyshark

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If you add a surfactant, such as soap detergent to water, it lowers the surface tension to the point where it can flow farther and penetrate deeper into substances without beading up. Although this doesn't follow the definitions of wetness GMK supplied, this process is actually known in the chemistry world as making the water "wetter"

The expert in moistness is Malcovent, not me...

I don't know, I mean I've been fascinated with wetness and all that has to do with getting/being/turning wet for a long while. I've never really taken the time to study wet but I try very hard for the wet to be important to this planet. Too many people don't realize that the wet in drinks and other things is vital for their health. A lot of people just assume that dehydration kills you, it's the wet that helps you.

I support the wet.
 

cheatyface

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Does your drink with ice in it become not a drink?
no o-O It just becomes a drink with ice in it. simple as that. xD
The drink is still the liquid, the ice isn't part of the drink until it melts, it's just inside it.
Ok, but smoothies are made with crushed ice. It's part of the drink. And you drink it.

Also, those are some jedi council level double standards, allowing the ice into the drink but not recognizing it as a member of the drink.
 

myusername22

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Ok, but smoothies are made with crushed ice. It's part of the drink. And you drink it.

Also, those are some jedi council level double standards, allowing the ice into the drink but not recognizing it as a member of the drink.
If you put your hamburger in the blender for a while and suck it through a straw you aren't really "eating a hamburger" you may as well be drinking it. Now let's assume the hamburger has juices in it as well. In both instances the item is made from components of both liquid and solid. whether a substance is liquid or solid at specific temperatures is a molecular property based upon the kinetic energy of that molecule. Now since we know thermal energy is the total sum of kinetic energy within a body and temperature is the average of the thermal energy per mass of said body then the temperature of the substance will determine the freezing/melting point of it. I'm going to switch over to the fruit within the smoothy as I think the water example may get confusing here. We may substitute the fruit because it like ice is also solid. Since the fruit in your smoothy is made of many many different molecules (many of which will have different freezing points however I won't get into that now) we know that fruit is solid at room temperature so therefore we can assume the molecules/substances within said fruit are essentially still frozen at room temperature. Since we probably safely assume you drink your smoothy at or above the freezing point of water(unless you wish to argue that most people drink smoothies as a solid block of ice) we can know that unless a molecular bonding were to occur between the water and the fruit (we known this isn't because its been proven possible to have chunks of fruit in your smoothy) we know that the smoothy itself is a mixture of both solids and liquids with a possible measurable percentage of each. Now let me take this to an extreme example. If I hand you an apple with a drop of water on it using the binary reasoning you are forced to accept that this apple is a drink. now let me take this to a further example of the atmosphere. First off let us agree that water vapor is the gaseous form of water. And that the atmosphere cannot hold more than 100% of the possible amount of water vapor it can hold. Let's say you set up a small village next to a river. Well let's say 5 drops fall out of the sky. Obviously 5 drops isn't going to cause a river to flood but essentially the wetness of the atmosphere is "wet". now on a separate occasion the humidity gets to 100% again and this time it pours massively well using your binary system of measurement. Now your system says again the atmosphere is "1" "wet" since the atmosphere is in binary state 1 and therefore by your measurement system comes out to all the same measurements the mathematics will come out to "prove" the same results to happen. Since more water is actually falling than the last time the river floods, and because of the inefficiency of your measurement system an entire village is wiped out.I hope this shows how redundant/inaccurate a binary measuring system of wetness is. I'm also going to introduce the hypothetical situation where you have an infinitely large solid and a single liquid molecule. now i know obtaining an infinitely large solid is initself impossible, however measurements could be anywhere between infinity and 0 which theoretically gives this binary wetness measuring system a theoretically infinite inaccuracy. these redundancies and inaccuracies would for sure not be useful for many situations the only time when this system would be accurate is if the drink were 100% liquid already, to which adding any quantity of more liquid wouldn't alter the measurement system. However I'll add that unless your drink was made in a lab it probably contains vitamins and minerals which could be solids themselves, and would therefore cause this system to be inaccurate with any ordinary or "average" considered drink. because of this it would be extremely unuseful for any scientific/mathematical purposes
so i'll say in the interest of science

yes your drink can get more wet!
 
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