This is being implemented in a smartphone by Xiaomi launching on the 29th. So hyped this technology is coming to the mass market.

I've chosen to spend money on my tech hobbies instead of the more typical expenses like travel/vacations, expensive cars, kids, etc.

0:47 "I'm not sure how they got the adhesive to stick to the teflon itself"... When YOU say you're not sure how something is done, the answer must be pure magic...

I tried the experiment with a jug of distilled water. A charged piece of PVC plastic pipe deflected the water stream coming directly from the new, pure jug of distilled water. I'm pretty sure dissolved ions do not play a role. I'm really tempted to show a video with distilled vs. salt water.

Teflon can be made sticky by ion stripping. Get yer stuff in vacuum, paint it with some toasty ionized gasses which acts much like molecular sand-blasting. Opens up sites for bonding, lets the adhesive stick!

Your videos are always so well produced and topically interesting. Thanks, Ben!

That got crazier than I expected

Great video. I teach a hands-on science pullout to gifted elementary schoolers and we've been exploring properties of water. I think I'll link to this in my newsletter so they can see real-life uses and hear someone else use all this great science vocabulary too :)

They use this principle in those new EWD's (electro wetting displays), were a black liquid is used as a curtain that you can move from the red part of the pixel to the green and the blue. They made them to be as similar to LCD's as possible, they work the same way except they don't use polarisation of light at all. Apparently they are 3 times as efficient and much more bright when used in direct sunlight.

See, this is what always gets me. People who claim that junk science is, even if it ends up being wrong, at very worst "harmless," fail to recognize that it gets in the way of us knowing real things about... real things. I'm fascinated by this concept... but now if I go research it, I'm a little nervous I'm gonna end up with nothing but misinformation. I guess I shouldn't let that stop me from trying to understand -- it probably won't -- but even still: Grr.

For anyone curious, the oil they use that has a density like that of water isn't vegetable oil or petroleum oil, but rather silicone oil - a polydimethylsiloxane like they put in kinetic sand.

In answer to your question about getting adhesive to stick to the PTFE. Assuming the tape is polythene, they could easily get an adhesive to stick to the polythene then by simply blowing F2 gas over the surface of one side of the polyethylene you get a PTFE surface on the polythene. I think that's how they put a PTFE coating on the inside of polythene pipes.

God, this is so interesting.

I LOVE THIS CHANNEL!!! You are truly inspiring to me. Greetings from Austria

No. Water will not become magnetic in this case 1) there are no electrons with uncoupled spins in H2O, so water cannot be magnetic 2) because you apply electric field, not magnetic, and water does not have multiferroic properties. However, if you apply strong enough electric field (order of MV/m) you can disrupt hydrogen-oxygen bonds and the water will have hard time freezing. (S. V. Schevkunov and A. Vegiri, Electric field induced transitions in water clusters, J. Mol. Struct. 593 (2002))

We are learning about electric fields and charge in my physics class. How convenient.

This video was impressive 👀👀👀

nice work

awesome. Now all I have to do is figure out how to use this concept to take pictures of microscopic things with my phone.

I actually had imagined a contact lens of flexible materials (soft contacts) that was hollow as a slit and there was a reservoir that had a pump hooked up to it to pump liquid into and out of that hollow slit to cause it to expand or contract, so that the contact lenses could adjust focal distance on the fly, after I thought of using something like silicon and that pump system to make a variable contact lens mold, so this is all very interesting to me. (the ideas on customizable lenses I mentioned were like from 1995 or so, back when I had my first soft contacts, :)

It would be interesting to see you apply an electrostatic field to flowing water, and using Schlieren photography or something else, view how the water stream flows on a microscopic level.

I find this particularly interesting because I am hoping to use the same properties that you show water having due to it being a positively and negatively charged molecule (both positive charge atoms and negative charge atoms in it.) and as we know from electrolysis they can be separated, so now the trick is to figure out how to control depositing the separated atoms to a surface :) (the theory behind my atom based 3D printer)

Electrical engineer here - the water stream deflects because the like charges are repelled away from the the high potential object either to ground (as in the faucet) or to virtual ground (anything of large enough size to act as a sink). The remaining charges (opposite) are attracted to the high potential object causing deflection. These charges, by the way, don't need to be a chemical ion. You have free electrons in every material. You can see the reverse of this with a single droplet. It does not have a large enough size to allow for charges to get moved far enough away. To provide this, you have to add an electrode that can pull the voltage down/up.

The material that you are describing is called electret. Paraffin can be made into electret. I am not sure about water. I did a quick search, but unfortunately, electrets are often referenced by crackpot, junk-science people so getting real information on the net can be difficult.

I think this would be pretty interesting in a camera or something of that nature. Or obsolete, still though, great demonstration.

I remember hearing about research into using liquid lenses for cell phones. (thinner cameras for thinner phones and all that)

I wonder if water can be heated cheaply by switching the electric field of the applied metal, etc on and off rapidly.

aluminum hardcoat can withstand 800 volts per 0.001" thickness. It's usually 0.001" to 0.002". You used 0.005" teflon at 5Kv. So uhh...nevermind, I think hard coated aluminum at the common thicknesses doesn't have enough dielectric strength. I'm leaving this commont incase it crossed someone else's mind (teflon tape isn't expensive but it's somewhat obscure for most people.) I guess a less obscure option common available 2-5 mils thick including adhesive would be Kapton tape. It has way better dielectric strength than teflon according to a quick search from random internet-sources.

Very interesting demo Sir, of water being attracted to comb. What kind of applications are anticipated of this attractikn?

Love your stuff man! Keep it up!

fascinating

Can You do more research on electret. And maybe make some that is frozen static position but balanced charg, to show some of its interesting properties?

I would suggest some one actually do some experimenting and find out for themselves. This is why I am working on getting a public access lab/workshop so people can do this even if they live in an apartment and have limited funds :)

it's amazing how complex seemingly simple physical effects can be. I got curious about that Teflon tape. epoxy doesn't tickle Teflon, there's gotta be some other material in that tape, any guess?

if you like this guy you will also like jeriellsworth both of them rock .. and come January both of them give me and my son killer ideals for the science fair .. did sdr last year ..this year idk yet. but its so much fun

Ahh, when water is in contact with a surface, there is a surface charge correlated to it. That charge will influence waters surface charge as well (or not depending on surface angle imparted). As a result of this influence, the electrodes have a different effect on the water droplet than running water.

I started researching on liquid lens when i heard Huawei plans to use it on their mobile phones, am so curious on how it works, thanks for the info, can electricity be produced from the positive charged comb and negative charged water through a connection

Could you do a magnetohydrodynamic demo? After I saw Hunt for Red October, and then learned the tractor motors were based on actual science..... mind blown!!

Good stuff!

Why aren't these lenses common in cellphones? They're mechanically simple, durable, and posses a huge focal range. Are the power requirements prohibitive?

If this water droplet moves due to electricity, does that mean electrolysis takes place? I saw people using Teflon clear coats and is till able to move the water droplets, this means no electrical contacts are moving the droplets, has to be an electromagnetic field.

Can you grow magnetic ice? If so though static discharge or by a magnet.

Coming after Xiaomi announced the Mi mix

I am a school teacher planning an experiment on how focal length varies with applied voltage.Please suggest some resource.I am from India .Btw your videos are well explained and very useful.Thanks.

Good video, very interesting. The explanation of the attractive force is incorrect though. See the paper: Electrical Deflection of Polar Liquid Streams: A Misunderstood Demonstration

that's extremely interesting, im actually only 18 and would love to get into a science field/engineering type work life so im working towards being able to..and sorry for the grammar mistakes before i always have been a science buff, never much for writing :P

If the water is attracted due to its polarity, why do we need to make it conductive by adding salt? I guess it might be due to the dissolved free charges (dissociation) instead

useful as usual

hey bkraz, thats actually rilley cool, how dose someone get into such an interesting field?

Can we use the 15kv the comb holds to drive a turbine?

Yes he does.

Could you use electrowetting or perhaps deflection to make an electric muscle? Just a thought.

it seems the rubbing method is more efficient. Is there a way to proof it by calculation?

I would be interested to see how far the water in a filled sink would jump out of the sink if you dropped your HV supply right into it powered up. Avenue of scientific equiry: what percentage of the water jumping out would be due to the electric field and what percentage would be due to the Archimedes effect? (Of course your measurements for the electric part would have to be done VERY quickly.). :-)

Do you say that non-polar molecules will not be attracted to charged things? What about vegetable oil? It attracts!

I think you wondered in your last liquid lens video if you could make a much larger lens. You find anything else out about that?

I don't have 5kv supply and it is not safe any alternate idea?

Where did you find that tape? I was looking for some for my camera slider to see if it would make it slide better.

Hey I have an idea, If you freeze water and while it is freezing you apply high voltage on it. Does the ice become magnetic? or does something else interesting happen like is ice crystal structure different from regular ice?

The Wikipedia article on electrets is quite good and seems devoid of crackpotism. Any chance you could try to make one? Your HV PSU seems sufficient.

Dumb question; if an electric charge causes the water molecules to orient a certain direction, could you use it to mix oil and water with an emulsifier by alternating electric charges on the sides of a vessel? The intent being, mixing a fluid without physical interaction like a stir bar or a spoon.

What do you actually do as a job ? I love the videos but I'm just curious as how you know this much about a broad spectrum of subject.

An electric dipole does not experience a force in a uniform electric field, just a torque. I wonder what would happen if you applied a more uniform field to the water stream.

Hi! I am looking to make some liquid lenses and I was wondering what exactly is the power supply you have called as I've been trying to find it on Amazon and I am having no luck :( also I have a power supply of 30 V (which I can see from this video is wayyyyy too weak for making liquid lenses) but I was wondering what's the minimum voltage you need as I'm aware the higher the voltage the more expensive they are

Mi mix phone is doing this now

Google patents is the friend of the curious hobbyist.

Did you have your safety glasses on?

Strange that it works with the water stream. I though a stream of water actually consists of disconnected drops of water.

At 7:13 you mention that liquid lens can change from No Power, to Negative Power, to Positive Power. Yet, you also mention there is no polarity at around 9 minutes. This kind of throws me off because if the water molecule is just flipping around then the water would behave the same upon reversal of current.

I see! So this is how Aquaman can move water and create tsunamis, vortices, and maelstroms.

Wow Amazing tech. Good Luck Ben. it's "portable lens" in future :)

If you are going to use imperial or metric system, could you please add a text or something for vice versa od the measurment units :).

could static be used to heat water? is there enough friction between the water molecules that a static pulse near the stream might cause rapid pole re alignment and a raise in temp?

Who is here after xiaomi announced the liquid lens in their smartphone🔥

Why do you need such high voltage?

are you telling me you helped built the Portal Gun?

Is this what xiaomi brought to the world today? The tech that was available 9 years ago? 😁

He works for a video game company I think I read somewere!

He works at Valve as a electrical engineer.

Doh, Valve grabs all smart people around the internet :-D . I wonder how much they offer besides their fancy office ;-)

runs off to get a comb and a towel!!!!

so, any news on steambox :) ?

No EoV Bye !?

You work at Valve the video game company?

whos here after watched mi mix fold launched?

take note.

There have been many lord-kevin's-thunderstorm vids, but if you ever do one, I know it will be ... shocking. (sorry). Microfluidics, maybe using some of your cool laser cutting / lithography.

My comb didn't work

how big can a liquid lens get

Error concerning polarity of water The deflection of a stream of water by an electric charge is often cited as a demonstration of the polarity of water molecules. The idea is not uncommon in text books and sometimes appears on examination papers. Students are expected to say that the deflection of the stream of water is due to the polarity of water molecules. Oxygen is more electronegative than hydrogen and since water molecules are not linear the centre of positive charge does not coincide with the centre of negative charge; therefore water molecules are electric dipoles. What’s wrong with this explanation? Water molecules are polar; this is true. However it is also true that they electrically neutral and that they are very small. If a negatively charged rod is held 10 cm away from a water molecule then the attractive force on the hydrogen side and the repulsive force on the oxygen side are, for all practical purposes, equal and opposite. Easily disproved Here are some simple demonstrations that clearly show that the ‘polarity argument’ is unsatisfactory. 1. No deflection occurs if the water becomes a stream of separate drops, unless the charged rod is sufficiently close to the point where the stream becomes discontinuous. (This immediately refutes the polarity argument.) 2. Get a 500 mL plastic drinks bottle. Using an awl or nail make a hole (about 1 mm in diameter) in the side of the bottle a few centimetres from the bottom. Place the bottle on a large insulated block (e.g. styrofoam container) near a sink. Fill the bottle with water and arrange it so that a stream of water flows into the sink. If a charged rod is brought near the stream it will not show a continuous deflection. (It may show a slight deflection initially but it will not last.) 3. Clamp a salt cellar on a retort stand so that the salt can flow out. Bring a charged rod near the salt stream. It does not deflect. (The charge separation in NaCl is greater than that of water; so are the charges. NaCl is about five times more polar than water but it is not deflected.) 4. (Don’t try this one.) A continuous stream of mercury would be deflected by a charged rod even though mercury atoms are not polar. What’s the right answer? The right answer is perfectly simple. Continuous conductors may be deflected by an electric charge. Water is a conductor and so if, for example, a negatively charged rod is brought near an unbroken stream of water coming from a tap then a positive charge can be induced on the part of the stream near the rod. The force of attraction between the two will deflect the stream. This cannot happen if the stream is broken into separate drops. In the second demonstration (above) even a continuous stream of water is not deflected if it is electrically isolated because electric charge has no path along which to flow.

Not unsure if trolled or not

I come here bxoz of Mi Mix

Try using oil, instead of Teflon

You can also rub a balloon in your hair and use the balloon to bend the water.

Oh my god he works at valve

@bkraz333 I thought Valve only made games.

Too bad you don't have any of that "super hydrophobic" glass to play with.

15 KV ON THIS COMB RIGHT NOW!!!

make a small light transistor and you will be a billionaire

This video is electrowinning.