Talk:Polywater

message: I know it spoils the narrative, but shouldn't pathological science appear in the opener? Wetman 21:09, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Lead

message: There seems to be an inconsitency in the article. At the beginning, the properties of the hypothetical substance are said to include a "freezing point of −40 °C or lower, a boiling point of 150 °C or greater". Later, it is said that sweat was found to have the same properties, and that "when subjected to chemical analysis, samples of polywater were invariably contaminated with other substances (explaining the changes in melting and boiling points)". I don't know what sort of contaminations could cause such enormous changes in the freezing point and boiling point, but I'm pretty sure that a) sweat doesn't have these properties and that b) if some contamination were indeed able to produce such properties, it wouldn't take sophisticated chemical analysis to see that the water was contaminated. Fpahl 17:31, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Fpahl that there seems to be an inconsistency in this article. Shibbolethink is technically correct that adding regular salt to water can easily lower its melting point below . However, the freezing-point depression article says that salty water (such as sweat) will always freeze at around  or above. The freezing-point depression of water from regular salt *cannot* produce a "freezing point of  or lower" mentioned in the article, no matter how much salt is added to the water. --DavidCary (talk) 19:10, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  inconsistency 

message: Should this really be in :Category:Hoaxes in science? I thought a hoax was more when it is intentional, rather than a mistake, like this... Phlip 14:16, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category 

message: Though ice nine from Cat's Cradle and polywater are similar, I'm not sure anybody ever proposed that polywater was self-catalytic as ice nine was in the book.Bjsamelsonjones 16:41, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "A material similar to polywater, Ice-9, also figures prominently in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle." -- I edited this out as Cat's Cradle is already mentioned in the article, and they really aren't the same at all (just one "doomsday scenario" was similar to the ice nine scenario). --24.16.251.40 05:50, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

text: F. J. Donahoe did publish a warning about polywater in 1969, in the journal Nature. He called it the most dangerous material on earth. And speculated that polywater was the reason for Venus missing water. So polywater was speculated as self-catalytic by some. Reko (talk) 12:59, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  In Fiction 

message: UW Professor Gerald Pollack published The Fourth Phase of Water. His science suggests an explanation for what happened in Fedyakin's lab ~50 years ago.
Pollack's science is presented in this new book. He discussed it in the lecture to the UW faculty on 2/24/2008. A recording of that lecture is available on Youtube. That same lecture is available from the University of Washington's Annual Faculty Lectures collection in iTunes U. The book is a better source for info about the Polywater controversy, but I could locate a pertinent quote (with timestamp) from the lecture. I converse with Pollack on e-mail; I can see if other sources are available.
::Here's a site criticizing Pollack's work as pseudoscience:
::*http://moreisdifferent.com/2015/11/19/debunking-exclusion-zone-water/
::It's a scientist's personal web site, so it probably doesn't meet WP:RS. However, he lists a number of references that do meet WP:RS and could be used for material discussion the "fourth phase"
::--168.215.132.201 (talk) 19:09, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  New science providing updated info on polywater 

message: Is there any information on Nikolai Fedyakin? Franks writes, "Did Fedyakin move to Moscow to continue his work there? If so, what became of him? It is not easy to find out, because letters addressed to him are never answered," as of 1981. Mcguire (talk) 14:45, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nikolai Fedyakin 

message: In season 2, episode 11, polymerized water was the reason for a new ice age. But instead of water having a lower freezing temperature, it had a higher one, causing a new ice age.
-G  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.31.37.239 (talk) 03:26, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Outer Limits 

message: I feel there should probably be a bit more information about why the US was so concerned by the supposed "Polywater Gap". Was it just that the Soviets seemingly had something we didn't, or did they suspect that the substance might actually have some potentially game-changing practical application? Because if such applications were thought to exist, it really isn't made clear in the text what those might have been. BrokenEye3 (talk) 09:57, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Polywater Gap?