liquid wire

IS it possible that we could someday use liquid mercury for electrical wiring. i didnt do much research, well none because its a thought that just hit me. But anyways i mean it wouldnt ever fray, the connection would always be there and if the plastic coating did get cut youd be able to see it really easily because of the mercury pouring out. the only thing i can think of to make this nonsense is maybe mercury isnt a good conductor of electricity.

Bad idea. Mercury is highly toxic and can cause a number of problem should it leak and evaporate. Copper and Tin wires will remain for quite some time and it's not as if those need regular maintanance as they are rather old technology. If anything I would think that we would move more towards a superconducting wire as it's almost lossless. It's like Fibre-optics in that you can send an electrical current down this wire and it will stay at the same intensity for vast distances.

Lots of cool stuff is happening in material sciences... there are conductive plastics at this older New Scientist link.superconductive wire is researched too, link. So I think a liqiud wire would be conceivable too. How good or practical a liquid wire would be is not something I'd be familair with any ideas?

Thanx,

Victor K.

[edit on 28-5-2006 by V Kaminski]

It would depend almost entirely on the properties of the liquid. Mercury is probably a bad idea, because of the toxicity... Salt water maybe? The conductive plastic sounds promising for a sheath..it would resist corrosion as well.

I can think of some pros and cons, just in general, for using liquid wires.

Replacing and installing liquid wires would be a lot easier than trying to push or pull metal wire, that's for sure. On the downside, the lines would have to be pressurized, which would increase the cost and probably increase the failure rate due to additional components.

It's definitely something worth exploring for specialized applications.

Originally posted by Schmidt1989
IS it possible that we could someday use liquid mercury for electrical wiring. i didnt do much research, well none because its a thought that just hit me. But anyways i mean it wouldnt ever fray, the connection would always be there and if the plastic coating did get cut youd be able to see it really easily because of the mercury pouring out. the only thing i can think of to make this nonsense is maybe mercury isnt a good conductor of electricity.

Actually mercury is quite an excellent conductor of electricity. However, it's cost and toxicity would preclude it being used in place of wire.

Mercury is commonly found in mercury switches, which are used for household light switches and thermostats.

What about Galium? I don't think its toxicity is entirely known, but it could work, if you're looking for safer alternatives to mercury.

More on plastic ultra-conductive wire. OK. Learn something new every day! Thanx Schmidt1989! Here's a link. I quote, "100,00 times better than gold". Seems some folks are interested in this with relation to ZPE too.

I never thought wire as that high-tech... more a pain in the butt really, pulling and runnin' conduit, cuttin' studs. The material sciences seem to be taking off, who knows one day pehaps "no wires" or something we don't now recognize as "wire".

Victor K.

[edit on 28-5-2006 by V Kaminski]

I never thought wire as that high-tech... more a pain in the butt really, pulling and runnin' conduit, cuttin' studs. The material sciences seem to be taking off, who knows one day pehaps "no wires" or something we don't now recognize as "wire".

Superconducting wire is the "Ultimate" power transmission technology. It's estimated that 1/3rd of all the energy we produce is wasted due to losses in power transmission with current technology. We could reduce this wastage by quite a bit with this technology.

[edit on 28-5-2006 by sardion2000]

Ok, so mercury was a bad idea. But at least i learned some stuff. It didnt even cross my mind that in the future, there may be no wires, i mean corless phones are pretty much a thing of the past, and mice and keyboards are on its way. only time will tell though.

I don't think liquid wires would be a good idea. Any damage at one point would destroy the entire system.

Originally posted by Schmidt1989
Ok, so mercury was a bad idea. But at least i learned some stuff. It didnt even cross my mind that in the future, there may be no wires, i mean corless phones are pretty much a thing of the past, and mice and keyboards are on its way. only time will tell though.

Wireless power transmission is also not a very good idea for a couple of reasons.

1st: We do not know the health effects of wireless power transmission, such a system would most likely use Microwaves and that is definately bad healthwise.

2nd: You can't get better then Superconduction. Electrons need a physical medium in order to be transmitted across vast distances efficiently.

Instead of liquid wires, think about nanotechnology. What about nanotubes that are formed and destroyed at will. With primitive programming, the nanomatter can be made to link or delink as determined by presence of a potential. Once the potential reaches a certain level, the nanomatter can be organized into conducting tubes to complete a path.

Originally posted by Freenrgy2
What about nanotubes that are formed and destroyed at will.

That would be rather expensive to accomplish from an energy consumption POV.

With primitive programming, the nanomatter can be made to link or delink as determined by presence of a potential. Once the potential reaches a certain level, the nanomatter can be organized into conducting tubes to complete a path.

You need to elaborate here. Please explain what you mean "by presence of a potential."

You guys are close, but think organic as the future, not more metallic.

www-03.ibm.com...

www.reed-electronics.com...

There was also an organic processor first made feasible about 2yrs ago, i have the pic at work on my tech machine, ill post it up tomorrow. Back in the tandy trs80 days, i often thought that organic connections would be with way, possibly have the whole chassis filled with fluid, (toms hardware tried it nowadays with oil, it ran for a while but not long, too many stray ions flyin around, i kid u not) www.tomshardware.com...

well then startrek had voyager with organic matrix(i know fake tv but conceptually) and whalla it hit me, it is feasible nowadays and then it was born.

edited for correction, it was the distilled water that was unusable due to flying ions. The oil performed pretty well but whatta mess if u spring a leak huh?

[edit on 30-5-2006 by S1LV3R4D0]