What is Digg?116 Comments
- jrapp, on 10/12/2007, -17/+107@hammydude: Thanks for the post, but next time, let's quote sources, mkay?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Toxicity_in_humans - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -20/+93Toxicity in humans
Because it would take a very great deal of heavy water to replace 25% to 50% of a human being's body water (70% of body weight) with heavy water, accidental or intentional poisoning with heavy water is unlikely to the point of practical disregard. For a poisoning, large amounts of heavy water would need to be ingested without significant normal water intake for many days to produce any noticeable toxic effects (although in a few tests, volunteers drinking large amounts of heavy water have reported dizziness, a possible effect of density changes in the fluid in the inner ear). For example, a 70 kg human containing 50 kg of water and drinking 3 liters of pure heavy water per day, would need to do this for almost 5 days to reach 25% deuteration, and for about 11 days to approach 50% deuteration. Thus, it would take a week of drinking nothing but pure heavy water for a human to begin to feel ill, and 10 days to 2 weeks (depending on water intake) for severe poisoning and death.
Oral doses of heavy water in the multi-gram range, along with heavy oxygen O-18, are routinely used in human metabolic experiments. See doubly-labeled water testing. Since 1 in every 6400 hydrogens is deuterium, a 50 kg human containing 32 kg of body water would normally contain enough deuterium (about 1 gram) to make 5 grams of pure heavy water, so roughly this dose is required to double the amount of deuterium in the body. - gameboyhippo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+45Since heavy water is not recommended to be drank, what's stopping guests from simply accusing you of making ice from something that isn't water?
- lazerdave, on 10/12/2007, -6/+45Homeland Security: You're coming with us, terrorist scum!
You: But, I bought it for a bar bet!
Homeland Security: I'll bet I can make your balls jump back into your body with just these two little wires and a car battery. How's that for a bar bet? - ThrasherC, on 10/12/2007, -5/+26Relatively worthless article, but dugg for mentioning a "Heavy Cow."
- Bishoco, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20As long as it's not ice-9 we'll be alright.
- lordjafar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18"spend it on a video game"
because THAT'S cool....... - Otto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16D2O inhibits mitosis above a certain concentration. Basically, when you get up to around 30-50% of your body's water being heavy, then your cells stop dividing normally. The effect of this is basically the same as radiation poisoning (although it's not radioactive, it would have the same basic symptoms because the resulting effects are similar). You'd get diarrhea, anemia, bleeding, infection...
But actually before you get that far, you'd first get dizzy spells as the fluid in your inner ear started to change density. You'd get the diarrhea next, and that would dehydrate you, making you more thirsty and possibly causing you to drink more of the stuff (let's say somebody swapped all your water bottles out with heavy water). Then, after several days of drinking it, you'd start getting really ill, and eventually you die. The only cure would be to get lots of normal water pumped in, to dilute the stuff to low enough levels, so that you could handle it.
It would be a darn near untracable way of killing somebody though, if you knew that they only drank bottled water (and almost nothing else) all day long. Replace all their water with heavy water and just wait. It'd take about 10-14 days worth of water. Visiting a doctor for the dizziness and diarrhea might not help the victim either, since a doctor is just going to probably diagnose a cold or something and give them some pills for the dizziness and GI problems and then maybe tell them to drink lots of fluids and rest more. Tricky, eh? - dognose, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14Here is some sinking ice I just made:
http://ser4.imgdump.net/blibs/ac8bd9fb.gif - masamunecyrus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Heavy water? That's a good way to get yourself on the NSA wiretapping list.
That said, if you're anything like me, you want some. United Nuclear saves the day again:
http://www.unitednuclear.com/chem.htm (search for 'Deuterium Oxide') - Kazrog, on 10/12/2007, -5/+15MOOOOOOF!
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11"It would be a darn near untracable way of killing somebody though"
Except it requires that you obtain about 30 liters of the stuff. It sells for $65/100 grams, and I'm sure a purchase of 30 liters wouldn't go unnoticed. The government tracks the sales of many chemicals.
Frankly, you'd probably have agents knocking on your door before you even filled your first water bottle. And of course, by day 5, the person would probably be in the hospital, where they'd likely get a saline drip. Kinda hard to administer heavy water in that situation.
Cute idea, but making it work would require a pretty contrived situation, even for a CSI episode.
"Since D2O isn't water"
It is water. Two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen. It should react a lot like water does, since all the atoms have the same valence, and all that. - cypher35, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9why is this filed under "mods"?
shouldn't this be under science? - No1nose, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12My in-laws have a pretty nasty freezer. All of the ice that comes out of their ice-maker stinks.
- YumYumKittyLoaf, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11@ Otto
Problem is, when they do an autopsy, they do a chemical analysis of the person's blood. Since D2O isn't water, it probably wouldn't show up correctly, or it will even say that it's D2O. Then they'll do a check on local chemical stores and see that someone has taken out a large quantity of D2O with your name on it. Then they'll search your house, find tons of empty bottles of D2O, and your digg post.
Or they might just think it's normal water... - play150, on 10/12/2007, -7/+15lol at first i read it as ice that stinks!
- DonPMitchell, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Hammydude is busted. Now you just need to figure out where the wikipidia article was copied from.
- masamunecyrus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Exactly. It's like inhaling helium. If you inhale too much helium, you run the risk of replacing too much of your oxygen supply with helium, thus suffocating youself.
...But surely everyone's inhaled helium before! ^_^ - SweetsGreen, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8glass marbles are harder to see...they look like bubbles in the ice.
I made ice sink in elementary school and it didn't cost $15 a cube. - MicrowavedH2o, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9very true... I would have a hard time actually collecting money unless I and the person I bet drank some...
- dognose, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Hmm, since it's so expensive, I wonder how much regular water you could add to it and still have the ice sink.
Even better, how much regular water would you add to make it neutrally buoyant? - Osjpr, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8This should be in the science section, not tech.
- masamunecyrus, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7I'm no expert, but basically, it's not toxic but your body can't use it like normal water. Because of that, if you drink too much, like alcohol or any other drink, it gets absorbed into your body. The only danger is if you have too much of it. It's really not a big danger as you have to drink a LOT (enough to replace 25-50% of your body's water with heavy water).
I wouldn't recommend physically -drinking- heavy water, but I suppose it's okay as long as you don't have more than you would typically have alcohol.
For more information, Wikipedia has the answer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Toxicity_in_humans - hello2usir, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9Ugh, and I was all impressed with Hammydude at first.
Thank you jrapp. - SlowOnTheUptake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4But you may have stumbled onto something here. If you replace the hydrogen in vegatable oil with duterium, you can sysnthesize "heavy vegatable oil". Now, if only we could think of some comercial application for that.
- Stopher, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4So what by masamunecyrus is saying is that while not toxic per se it competes with absorbtion of regular water that we need?
- david76, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The best part is once you're done you can use electrolysis to release the deuterium and use it to power your fusion reactor.
- sHuShAnE, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4This is just plain pointless! And it seems after a few cocktails people will bet on anything huh?
- tonywestonuk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Hmmm, But also from wikipedia:
In 1990, a disgruntled employee at the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station took a sample of heavy water from the primary heat transport loop of the reactor and loaded it into a water cooler. 8 employees drank some of the contaminated water. The incident was discovered when employees began leaving bioassay urine samples with elevated tritium levels. The quantities involved were well below levels which could induce heavy water toxicity, but several employees received elevated radiation doses from tritium and activated chemicals in the water.[2]. As such, this was not really an incident of heavy water poisoning so much as radiation poisoning from other isotopes in the heavy water. Had pure heavy water been used in the water cooler, even indefinitely, it is unlikely that the incident would ever have been detected, since no employees would be expected to get more than 25% of their daily drinking water from such a source.
So, I guess it is safe to drink.... a bit like saying its unsafe to breath Carbon Dioxide, or Helium..... You'd need to be drinking it soaly for a week for any ill effects to happen. - willcode4beer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3(although isotopes) tritium != deuterium
- cawpin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3There is a lot easier way to do this, as long as you don't have to drink it. Just use alcohol instead of water and use regular ice cubes. Same effect.
- dognose, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You could also just put regular ice cubes in isopropyl. They will sink.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4then you have to ask yourself ... why? My ice that floats cools my liquids just fine. and if i want to eat the ice, i dont have to dig to the bottom of the glass to get it. floating ice ftw.
- masamunecyrus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3And the Germans were making good progress until we sabotaged their heavy water production over and over and over again. :-)
- hbweb500, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Employee 1: Hey, Bob, whatcha doin there?
Employee 2: Oh, not much, just taking some of this chemical from the primary transfer loop of this here reactor.
Employee 1: Oh, OK, have fun.
Hope it isnt so easy to take the uranium. - cheez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2i actually did this, i bought some d2o from united nuclear (best place to buy chemicals online in my opinion) and it's pretty cool, it freaks some people out
- SweetsGreen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2For the most part it was Norwegian commandos (with help from the Brittish) that took out the factory....Kind of a cool story, I'm surpised there hasn't been a movie made about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage - geniusj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2you may win with the quantity of bets depending on how many drunk people you can convince ;)
- rbtopp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2cool people don't spend money on video games they spend money on booze and drugs.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Does anyone remember in the 1966 Batman movie, where Penguin uses "heavy water" to re-hydrate his henchmen in the Batcave...then the re-hydrated henchmen disappear at the slighest touch in an anti-matter reaction?
This explains so much... :P - dougmc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Well, I don't really call myself a physicist, but I did get a degree in Physics, so maybe I'm qualified to answer this ...
Deuterium (hydrogen with an extra neutron, I'll abbreviate it as `D') has all the same chemical properties as standard hydrogen (which I'll abbreviate as `H') but there are some subtle differences.
Basically, the electron and the nucleus orbit the center of mass of the atom (I'll try to ignore quantum mechanics as much as possible here to make it simple.) Since a proton weighs 1800x as much as an electron, this center of mass is almost exactly in the middle of the nucleus -- but not exactly. When the nucleus has both a protron and a neutron, the nucleus now weights about 3600x as much as the electron, so the center of mass is even closer to the center of the nucleus.
This causes the atom to be a tiny bit larger (again, I'm ignoring quantum mechanics here to keep things simple) and changes things like the melting point, boiling point, energy released/absorbed by chemical reactions, etc. The difference is very small, but noticable. And since life is based on some very complicated and picky chemical reactions, even a tiny monkey wrench in the mix can cause problems.
The wikipedia article on heavy water -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water -- covers the problems seen in a little more detail. - DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2From Wikipedia:
"Mammals such as rats given heavy water to drink die after a week, at a time when their body water approaches about 50% deuteration. The mode of death appears to be the same as that in cytotoxic poisoning (such as chemotherapy) or in acute radiation syndrome (though of course deuterium is not radioactive), and is due to deuterium's action in generally inhibiting cell division." - stomicron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Your local bartender will tell you that it is possible to layer to solutions of only slightly different densities if you pour them carefully enough.
- Mrkamikaze, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I i remember right heavy water was the first step in creating the atomic bomb. I believe it was used as evidence the Germans were seeking a bomb during WWII.
- tizz66, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Since it's still essentially water, could a biologist/physicist amongst us explain why it wouldn't be safe to drink?
- Otto, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Heavy water density is about 1.1 g/ml.
Normal water density is about 1.0 g/ml.
Vegetable oil density is about 0.9 g/ml.
So the heavy water would go to the bottom, with the normal water above that, and the oil above both. The problem is that the heavy water and water won't easily form a layered barrier, they will mix and form a single substance with about half the density. If you left them alone long enough, then they'd layer, but it would take a long time. - artanis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3No, not really.
See jrapp's reply to the first comment. - SlowOnTheUptake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Isn't ordinary water is heaverier (more dense) than vegatable oil?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"I will stick to normal cubes and let the NSA stick to Arabs." by joerastaman
Gotta love racism! Let me guess... Republican? - UncommonSense, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Odds are, everyone would believe there is some way ice won't float, and they would not take the bet. At $15 per heavy ice cube, this article is a great way to lose a nice amount of money. And who the hell would make a bet at a cocktail party that ice won't float? You might as well wear a fanny pack and whip out a calculator to announce how cool you are. Not only do you lose money for paying for these ice cubes, but you also announce to the room how lame you are.
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