• LostXOR@fedia.io
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      17 hours ago

      Supercritical fluids are more like a gas than a liquid. Their lack of surface tension means they’ll diffuse throughout whatever container you put them in, so they can’t really be “poured” like a liquid can. They’re actually a pretty good example of why liquids need surface tension to be liquid.

      • _stranger_@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        that’s a pretty good point, it’s literally trapped between being a liquid and a gas. If this was BattleBots, they’d let it compete once and then ban it.

        • thebestaquaman@lemmy.world
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          13 hours ago

          “Trapped between liquid and gas” is kind of the opposite of what a supercritical fluid is. It’s more that gas and liquid states are “trapped” in a region of phase space, while supercritical fluids exist in the place where the demarcation between the two no longer exists (which is usually a far larger region than where it does).

    • zout@fedia.io
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      15 hours ago

      Superfluid. It can be supercritical, but superfluid is the special thing for helium.