Title text:

You’d think the most expensive part would be the quark-gluon plasma chamber, but it’s actually usually the tube to the top of the atmosphere to carry the cosmic rays down.

https://explainxkcd.com/2982

  • addie@feddit.uk
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    2 months ago

    The joke about adding well water back in again at the end is “correct”. Reverse osmosis removes 100% of the solids from the water, but drinking water usually contains small quantities of solids - you can see a breakdown on the label of some bottled water. Completely pure water would leach all of the solids that have built up on the insides of water pipes over the decades, and leaches away the protective oxide layer from metal pipework, causing it to corrode surprisingly rapidly. It also tastes pretty shitty - kind of “dead”. So a small amount of high-solids water is mixed back in after RO to bring the water back to normal levels.

    All that other shit in the diagram? No. Purification and treatment takes place after the mixing step, it would be crazy not to.

    • flicker@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      It is a joke image.

      But also yes. Pure water tastes awful. I’m one of those “super” tasters and I used to work for a water filtration company. Lemme say… what people think they want and what they actually want are often two different things.

    • spazzman6156@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      Water taste is subjective. I absolutely hate the taste of high-mineral water and love pure water. RO or distilled water tastes absolutely amazing to me.

  • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
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    2 months ago

    Here’s an idea. Once you’ve already split the water molecules with electrolysis, you should throw those streams into separate mass spectrometers, but without the detector obviously. The idea is, that with ions flying in a magnetic field, their mass would determine where they land. Anything that isn’t the right kind of isotope, let alone right kind of atom, would be separated into the waste stream.

  • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Another article tag on explaixkcd that makes you go hmm 🤔😄

    WATER. JUST PLAIN WATER. NOTHING DONE TO IT, JUST PLAIN WATER. POSSIBLY DRINKABLE. - Do NOT delete this tag too soon.

    • SpookyAlex03@lemmy.zipOP
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      2 months ago

      They always have fun with the “attribution” of that incomplete explanation tag for new comics 😄

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Yeah I know, some are just better than others 😁

        And none tickle me as much as the best {obvious thing} [Citation needed] ones 😄

  • hoch@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    This is how I felt trying to build a water purification system in Oxygen Not Included