The Art of Coding in Water: An Experiment with Electronic Circuits and Electrolysis

In a nutshell, electrolysis means that the water ions react with the probe metals to create oxygen and hydrogen, which are the bubbles while the probes slowly corrode and thus become less conductive, which could be a potential problem for electronic circuits. But what about the additive function? To prove this theory, we filled a second container with distilled water, which more or less lacks all the ions and only consists of H2O.

By varying the distance of the DC voltage probes to one another, we got current flows of around 50 micrograms to around 70 micrograms at best, which would equal a resistance of approximately 30 kilo ohms per centimeter. That's ten times bigger than normal tap water, which showcases that the additives make water conductive and also reactive.

Since there's no visible chemical reaction happening, let's try the mains AC voltage once again. The current flow varies from 1300 micro amps up to 1720 micro amps, which again equals a resistance of around 30 kilo ohms per centimeter, which is again ten times bigger than with tap water. And by observing the probes, there also seems to be no visible chemical reaction and thus no problem for our probes.

So putting electronic circuits into distilled water should work without a problem, right? Well, let's start small with the most basic passive components - a resistor, a capacitor, and a coil. By utilizing a transistor tester, we can measure the resistance of the resistor, the capacitance of the capacitor, and the inductance of the coil.

And to our surprise, after placing D-components either inside the tap water or the distilled water, the measured values of the transistor tester did only very slightly change. The reason could be here that the leads of those components are pretty far apart and thus the equivalent resistance of the water did not interfere enough.

But what about a small Arduino Pro Mini board that features components and PCB traces which are very close to one another? Our programs, aunt we know pro minis to let its onboard LEDs blink every seconds after then adding wires to the 5 volt and ground pin of the microcontroller and powering them with my lab bench power supply.

I started by submerging the first one in tap water right after the submersion though the LED stopped blinking and even after lifting the Arduino out of the water, the microcontroller did not want to work correctly anymore. But for now, let's keep it in the water - later analyze how similar battery powder electronics would have reacted underwater.

So let's try the same experiment with the second one, we know in distilled water which to my surprise also immediately stopped working once it was submerged. Resetting the microcontroller did not help either, but after letting the Arduino sit in the water for a couple of seconds, it started working again.

Seems like complex electronics can work in distilled water just a bit reliable and while observing the now functioning Arduino I noticed that there are almost no chemical reactions. The Arduino and tap water looks like it's slowly dissolving so let's get both Arduinos out of the water and after drying them off and powering them once again, I noticed that both my controllers still functioned without a problem.

The only difference is that why the distilled water Arduino still looks brand new, while the tap water Arduino corroded quite a bit which in the long run could have probably destroyed it. As a last experiment, I saw the two wires too small SMD capacitor and charged it up with a voltage equivalent to a lipo battery voltage as you can see after the charging normal current flows but if we add tap water to the setup, we can observe D by now well-known chemical reaction which lets current flow again.

After 30 minutes in the water, I wiped off the water and notice that there's now a constant leakage current due to the long electrochemical corrosion which can for example drain the battery of your electronic circuit slowly. So all in all, water and electricity/electronic circuits are certainly not best friends but they are not as dangerous together as people usually say.

And by coding electronics in various materials, you can even make them completely waterproof but that is a subject for another video. Until then, don't forget to Like share and subscribe stay creative and we'll see you next time.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enone of the most misrepresented things in movies nowadays is electrical current for example as soon as life wires touch any kind of water it becomes an instant death trap which as you can see is obviously not true another example is that one's electronic circuits touch water it gets immediately destroyed which is only partly true so to get rid of all those preconceptions we will conduct a couple of experiments in this video to find out how water and electricity correlate and in which way water actually influences electronic circuits let's get started for starters let's fill up a glass container with plain old tap water set my lab bench power supply to 15 volts connect the multimeter set to current measuring in Sirius and place the probes in the water to determine how much current will flow through the water dependent on the distance of the two probes at a distance of around 10 centimeters we get around 7.2 millions at 5 centimeters 8.5 movie amps and at 1 centimeter 13.4 milli amps which according to Ohm's law equals a resistance of approximately 300 ohms per centimeter that means we could for example use the water as a current limiting resistor for five millimeter LED but besides the resistive aspect of the water there also seems to be a chemical reaction happening at one probe since bubble rise to the surface 2 investigates this chemical reaction a bit better let's rather utilize mains voltage which offers a higher RMS voltage of 230 volts and thus by placing it in the tab water much more current flows just like before by shortening the distance between the two probes the resistance decreases and thus the current flow increases which after a bit of data equals a resistance of around 300 ohms per centimeter as well but unlike before we can now observe a more powerful chemical reaction at both probes and after letting the probes sit in the water for around 20 minutes these surface of them suffered quite a bit and even reveals a bit of rust the problem is that tap water does not only consist of the water molecules h2o but also of cations like calcium magnesium and natrium which possess a positive charge and anions like carbonates hydrogen carbonates chloride and sulfates which possess a negative charge those additives not only make the electron flow aka the electrical current through the water possible but also create an electrolysis I'm certainly not chemists but in a nutshell it means that the water ions react with the probe metals in order to create oxygen and hydrogen which are the bubbles while the probes slowly corrodes and thus become less conductive which could be a potential problem for electronic circuits but more about that later for now let's prove this theory of the additive function by filling a second container with distilled water which more or less lacks all the ions and only consists of h2o by varying the distance of the DC voltage probes to one another we get current flows of around 50 micrograms to around 70 micrograms at best which would equal a resistance of approximately 30 kilo ohms per centimeter that is ten times bigger than normal tap water which showcases that the additives make water conductive and also reactive since this time there's no visible chemical reaction happening to end this first experiment let's try the mains AC voltage once again the current flow varies from 1300 micro amps up to 1720 micro amps which once again equals a resistance of around 30 kilo ohms per centimeter which is again 10 times bigger then with tap water and by observing the probes there also seems to be no visible chemical reaction and thus no problem for our probes so putting electronic circuits into distilled water should work without a problem right well let's start small with the most basic passive components a resistor a capacitor and a coil by utilizing a transistor tester we can like usual measure the resistance of the resistor the capacitance of the capacitor and the inductance of the coil and to my surprise after placing D components either inside the tap water or the distilled water the measured values of the transistor tester did only very slightly the reason could be here that the leads of those tht components are pretty far apart and thus the equivalent resistance of the water did not interfere enough but what about a small arduino pro mini board that features components and PCB traces which are very close to one another so our programs - aunt we know pro minis to let its onboard LEDs blink every seconds after then adding wires to the 5 volt and ground pin of the microcontroller and powering them with my lab bench power supply I started by submerging the first one in tap water right after the submersion though the LED stopped blinking and even after lifting the Arduino out of the water the microcontroller did not wanted to work correctly anymore but for now let's keep it in the water - later analyze how similar battery powder electronics would have reacted underwater so let's try the same experiment with the second out we know in distilled water which to my surprise also immediately stopped working once it was submerged resetting the microcontroller did not help either but after letting the Arduino sit in the water for a couple of seconds it started working again seems like complex electronics can work in distilled water just a bit reliable and while observing the now functioning Arduino I noticed that there are almost no chemical reactions while the Arduino and tap water looks like it's slowly dissolving so let's get both Arduino s-- out of the water and after drying them off and powering them once again I noticed that both my controllers still functioned without a problem the only difference is that why the distilled water Arduino still looks brand new the tap water Arduino corroded quite a bit which in the long run could have probably destroyed it as a last experiment I saw the two wires too small SMD capacitor and charged it up with a voltage equivalent to a lipo battery voltage as you can see after the charging normal current flows but if we add tap water to the setup we can observe D by now well known chemical reaction which lets current flow once again after 30 minutes in the water I wiped off the water and notice that there's now a constant leakage current due to the long electrochemical corrosion which can for example drain the battery of your electronic circuit slowly so all in all water and electricity / electronic circuits are certainly not best friends but they are not as dangerous together as people usually say and by coding electronics in various materials you can even make them completely waterproof but that is a subject for another video until then don't forget to Like share and subscribe stay creative and we'll see you next timeone of the most misrepresented things in movies nowadays is electrical current for example as soon as life wires touch any kind of water it becomes an instant death trap which as you can see is obviously not true another example is that one's electronic circuits touch water it gets immediately destroyed which is only partly true so to get rid of all those preconceptions we will conduct a couple of experiments in this video to find out how water and electricity correlate and in which way water actually influences electronic circuits let's get started for starters let's fill up a glass container with plain old tap water set my lab bench power supply to 15 volts connect the multimeter set to current measuring in Sirius and place the probes in the water to determine how much current will flow through the water dependent on the distance of the two probes at a distance of around 10 centimeters we get around 7.2 millions at 5 centimeters 8.5 movie amps and at 1 centimeter 13.4 milli amps which according to Ohm's law equals a resistance of approximately 300 ohms per centimeter that means we could for example use the water as a current limiting resistor for five millimeter LED but besides the resistive aspect of the water there also seems to be a chemical reaction happening at one probe since bubble rise to the surface 2 investigates this chemical reaction a bit better let's rather utilize mains voltage which offers a higher RMS voltage of 230 volts and thus by placing it in the tab water much more current flows just like before by shortening the distance between the two probes the resistance decreases and thus the current flow increases which after a bit of data equals a resistance of around 300 ohms per centimeter as well but unlike before we can now observe a more powerful chemical reaction at both probes and after letting the probes sit in the water for around 20 minutes these surface of them suffered quite a bit and even reveals a bit of rust the problem is that tap water does not only consist of the water molecules h2o but also of cations like calcium magnesium and natrium which possess a positive charge and anions like carbonates hydrogen carbonates chloride and sulfates which possess a negative charge those additives not only make the electron flow aka the electrical current through the water possible but also create an electrolysis I'm certainly not chemists but in a nutshell it means that the water ions react with the probe metals in order to create oxygen and hydrogen which are the bubbles while the probes slowly corrodes and thus become less conductive which could be a potential problem for electronic circuits but more about that later for now let's prove this theory of the additive function by filling a second container with distilled water which more or less lacks all the ions and only consists of h2o by varying the distance of the DC voltage probes to one another we get current flows of around 50 micrograms to around 70 micrograms at best which would equal a resistance of approximately 30 kilo ohms per centimeter that is ten times bigger than normal tap water which showcases that the additives make water conductive and also reactive since this time there's no visible chemical reaction happening to end this first experiment let's try the mains AC voltage once again the current flow varies from 1300 micro amps up to 1720 micro amps which once again equals a resistance of around 30 kilo ohms per centimeter which is again 10 times bigger then with tap water and by observing the probes there also seems to be no visible chemical reaction and thus no problem for our probes so putting electronic circuits into distilled water should work without a problem right well let's start small with the most basic passive components a resistor a capacitor and a coil by utilizing a transistor tester we can like usual measure the resistance of the resistor the capacitance of the capacitor and the inductance of the coil and to my surprise after placing D components either inside the tap water or the distilled water the measured values of the transistor tester did only very slightly the reason could be here that the leads of those tht components are pretty far apart and thus the equivalent resistance of the water did not interfere enough but what about a small arduino pro mini board that features components and PCB traces which are very close to one another so our programs - aunt we know pro minis to let its onboard LEDs blink every seconds after then adding wires to the 5 volt and ground pin of the microcontroller and powering them with my lab bench power supply I started by submerging the first one in tap water right after the submersion though the LED stopped blinking and even after lifting the Arduino out of the water the microcontroller did not wanted to work correctly anymore but for now let's keep it in the water - later analyze how similar battery powder electronics would have reacted underwater so let's try the same experiment with the second out we know in distilled water which to my surprise also immediately stopped working once it was submerged resetting the microcontroller did not help either but after letting the Arduino sit in the water for a couple of seconds it started working again seems like complex electronics can work in distilled water just a bit reliable and while observing the now functioning Arduino I noticed that there are almost no chemical reactions while the Arduino and tap water looks like it's slowly dissolving so let's get both Arduino s-- out of the water and after drying them off and powering them once again I noticed that both my controllers still functioned without a problem the only difference is that why the distilled water Arduino still looks brand new the tap water Arduino corroded quite a bit which in the long run could have probably destroyed it as a last experiment I saw the two wires too small SMD capacitor and charged it up with a voltage equivalent to a lipo battery voltage as you can see after the charging normal current flows but if we add tap water to the setup we can observe D by now well known chemical reaction which lets current flow once again after 30 minutes in the water I wiped off the water and notice that there's now a constant leakage current due to the long electrochemical corrosion which can for example drain the battery of your electronic circuit slowly so all in all water and electricity / electronic circuits are certainly not best friends but they are not as dangerous together as people usually say and by coding electronics in various materials you can even make them completely waterproof but that is a subject for another video until then don't forget to Like share and subscribe stay creative and we'll see you next time