this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2025
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Science Memes

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top 34 comments
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 hours ago

Fun fact; cats can drink straight seawater. Mad good kidneys or something, so the soup is going to get far too salty for a human before it gets too salty for a cat.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago

True—salt is the worst.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I was going to make a sodium joke, but Na.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

I could Barium hold my laughter at this.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It is the other way round though isn't it?

Sodium Chloride is just chilling as a rock or in suspension and then humans put a lot of energy into it, so it is forced to separate. Imagine you and your spouse being torn apart with a lot of violence.

Of course you get traumatized and act out until you get reunited and have some time to become chill again.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Finally someone that respects that marriage is about the bond between an alkali and a halogen, and should not be separated.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Ionic bonded compounds such as NaCl, when in water, interact with other ions around them.
Even other Na^+^ and Cl^-^ ions...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

Which is why I don't drink water. It's satanic.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 day ago

This is how the Karens and Mommy Blogs sound when they complain about "Mercury in vaccines" but it's just one mercury atom in a molecule that no longer behaves like elemental mercury

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 day ago (3 children)

That's one thing that annoys me about lithium batteries. Every time there's an EV fire, people pop out of the woodwork to shit on the FD for using water to put it out.

Just because the name has lithium in it doesn't mean it's elemental lithium.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It’s a situation of just enough knowledge, I think. It’s true that water won’t put out an EV battery fire, but it will cool it down and prevent the fire from spreading.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

Well, it will put out the fire, but it does it by cooling the battery down so the reaction stops (like you said)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I guess it depends on what burns. Water is conductive, so you might not want to use it to put out an electrical fire because of the risk of electrocution.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago

A lithium battery fire is a chemical fire, not an electrical one. There's pretty much a zero percent chance of getting electrocuted putting one out with water.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What does EV and FD stand for?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

Electric vehicle and fire department.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

On one side of the battery, it is elemental Lithium.

It exchanges electrons across a membrane with another substantial.

Using water on it is bad because the reaction between Lithium and water evolves Hydrogen gas, which ignites in the fire.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

You're wrong.

Lithium batteries contain little to no elemental lithium. They normally contain lithium cobalt oxide, lithium iron phosphate, or lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide as the anode, and a lithium salt as the electrolyte.

Water is about the only way to put one out because it's an exothermic reaction (water is to cool it down so it stops), and two out of the three are self-oxidizing so you can't just smother it.

The biggest danger of a lithium battery getting wet is that it shorts, which can lead to a fire because it goes into thermal runaway. But this can happen if you have one in your pocket with spare change (most of the vape fires in the 2010s were this)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

A tiny "ackshually" is that there also exist non-rechargeable lithium batteries that have actual elemental lithium in them, which might be adding to the confusion.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Even those aren't elemental lithium. They use Lithium-iron disulfide, Lithium-thionyl chloride, Lithium-manganese dioxide, and Lithium-sulfur dioxide.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

In every one you mention elemental lithium is the anode and whatever second part in the name is the cathode.
https://youtube.com/shorts/yGDkiUAwxRs

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Lithium metal batteries are nonrechargeable primary batteries that have metallic lithium as an anode.

You're trolling or what?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Metallic lithium != elemental lithium. If you scrolled down to the chemistry section, they list both the anode and cathode. Nothing in the list has elemental lithium.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Elemental lithium means that it's pure lithium, i.e. not being in a compound with any other element. Metallic lithium means that lithium is a metal in its pure form. You're awfully confident for how little you seem to know about basic chemistry.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Still didn't scroll down to chemistry, did you?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

I did. Every one except lithium iron phosphate at the bottom has elemental lithium as anode. What is your point and why do you like to argue so much?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Even just H and O on their own can be quite scary. Throw them together and BAM, ubiquitous lifegiving liquid.

[–] ColdWater 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

You guy drink H2O?, in my household we drink D2O.

[–] dankm 1 points 11 hours ago

That sounds expensive.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I know you wrote H and O, and not H2 and O2, but I'm going to assume the gas forms because those two substances pretty much cannot exist in their pure forms

And for those, O2 is necessary for our life, and H2 is non-toxic, it's just very flammable. So I don't know if the comparison fully works

Of course, you're right if you mean pure H and pure O, but, again, they will immediately combine to form a new substance

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago

H3... We drink heavy water in this house!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Idk, I quite like O on its own. Pretty addictive stuff

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

Salt is scarier than the elements sodium or chlorine because, according to Wikipedia, "Salt is essential for life in general." Without salt, there wouldn't be humans creating things like chlorine gas. Life is scary.