Poll: Is Ice wet?

[Im Nightmare]

Ice is dry, it is a solid.

If you have ever got part of your body stuck to something frozen you would know that ice is dry, very very fecking dry. Of course being reasonably smart you have probably never had this happen.

Anyway, ice is dry, when it melts it becomes water, which is wet. When you put your hand against a block of ice your hand gets wet, because it melted some ice and made water. That is wet, but it is not ice, the ice is still ice and still dry.

Makes sense to me.

This

 

[MGlBlaze]

It depends what you mean by 'dry'.

No, ice is very dry, the water that's melted from said ice makes idiots think that the ice is 'wet'.

Pretty much this is what I was thinking of.

If by 'dry' you mean 'contains no water', though, then yes, ice is wet. I guess this would be the meaning of a 'dry' substance in chemistry, since there you can technically have 'dry' liquids as long as they don't involve water itself.

Doesn't that mean a wet cloth is also dry? After all, there is no actual water in the composition of the fabric's molecules, even if there is water in and around the cloth itself.

By that thiking, anything that isn't water is always dry because water molecules are by definition just that; on becoming part of the molecular structure of other things, it ceases to be water.

So yes, a wet cloth is wet because there is water present in the cloth.

I say yes, ice is sort of wet. It's slick, and if it melts even in the slightest, it would be wet. So there's my reasoning.

As for dry ice, I have never seen it in real life, but I heard if you get that wet, it makes smoke, or stream or something.

What's all this talk about dry ice? It isn't actually 'ice' at all, it's just Carbon Dioxide as a solid. Carbon Dioxide deposits (opposite of sublimation: Going from gas directly to solid) at -78.5 degrees celsius at atmospheric pressure.

Getting it wet makes 'smoke' as the dry ice sublimates quickly from the temperature of the water and becomes a gas. This gas is still very cold, though, so it condenses water in the air, and it's that condensed water that causes the smoke/mist effect.

 

[sheic99]

Why is a topic that is covered in "Baby's First Science Book" a subject of debate in a forum with previously thought to be intelligent people?

Because deep down were all idiots, or lib art majors.

 

[maninahat]

It depends what you mean by 'dry'.

No, ice is very dry, the water that's melted from said ice makes idiots think that the ice is 'wet'.

Pretty much this is what I was thinking of.

If by 'dry' you mean 'contains no water', though, then yes, ice is wet. I guess this would be the meaning of a 'dry' substance in chemistry, since there you can technically have 'dry' liquids as long as they don't involve water itself.

Doesn't that mean a wet cloth is also dry? After all, there is no actual water in the composition of the fabric's molecules, even if there is water in and around the cloth itself.

By that thiking, anything that isn't water is always dry because water molecules are by definition just that; on becoming part of the molecular structure of other things, it ceases to be water.

So yes, a wet cloth is wet because there is water present in the cloth.

So is ice wet as well, by virtue that there is water present on the ice surface?

 

[Caurus]

well to test if its wet you have to touch it and body heat will melt it...so yeah.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

I've touched ice that was -80 degrees C with my bare hands, it certainly wasn't wet.

 

[Omega V]

well the thing is even at sub zero temperatures ice will have a layer of liquid water around it a few molecules thick, so therefore ice is wet