Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Be there and welcome to tech stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren boc Obam. And it
Speaker 1: looks like we've got a little listener mail to take
Speaker 1: care of today. Yes, Henry wrote in by a Facebook
Speaker 1: and asked, can you please make a show explaining ingrish
Speaker 1: protection and water resistance for electronics? Specifically, what exactly does
Speaker 1: x feat up to x minutes resistance mean? That's an
Speaker 1: excellent question, Henry. Yes, thank you. Yeah, we're very thankful
Speaker 1: for you sending that in, and we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about this because you know, that was one of the
Speaker 1: things I always wondered for a while too, like what
Speaker 1: what does water resistant versus water proof mean? What does
Speaker 1: it take to make something like that? Why don't we
Speaker 1: see more tech that's water proof? I mean, come on, iPhones,
Speaker 1: as soon as you drop it in the water. Everyone
Speaker 1: knows that if you drop your iPhone in the water,
Speaker 1: it could short out. You've got a broken iPhone, And
Speaker 1: those folks at Apple are just like, we don't cover
Speaker 1: water damage. Yeah, you shouldn't have dropped it in the water. Yeah, time,
Speaker 1: try not dropping it in the water, and whereas we say, look,
Speaker 1: I understood that I was holding it wrong, but could
Speaker 1: we at least make it so that it can withstand
Speaker 1: some water. Well, here's here's the whole deal about it.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk all about waterproofing and why we want
Speaker 1: to do it in the first place. So what the
Speaker 1: heck is it about water that ruins tech in the
Speaker 1: first place. Well, here's the thing about water. Water, unless
Speaker 1: you're talking about distilled deionized water, is conductive. Yeah. Conductive
Speaker 1: means it allows electrical current to flow through it. That's
Speaker 1: what conductive is. Right. So, if you have a material
Speaker 1: that allows electric current to flow through it, and you
Speaker 1: put that in contact with an electrical circuit where electricity
Speaker 1: is supposed to run a very specific pathway, right, which
Speaker 1: all electrical circuits are based on. Mean, it's there. The
Speaker 1: electricity in your iPhone isn't just like bouncing around all
Speaker 1: Willie Nilli going through extremely specific path right. I kind
Speaker 1: of like the vision of a of a phone that
Speaker 1: if you were to open it up you just see
Speaker 1: electrons going all over the place. That would be a
Speaker 1: broken phone. Yeah, also possibly a terrible Hollywood movie. But
Speaker 1: if if you were to introduce this conductive material to
Speaker 1: a circuit and allow electrons to flow through a direct
Speaker 1: pathway from point A to point B instead of going
Speaker 1: through all these different gates like it would in a transistor,
Speaker 1: like a series of transistors, you get what's called a
Speaker 1: short circuit. Now, a short circuit is uh is not
Speaker 1: a good thing. I mean, this is where you have
Speaker 1: two different voltages, difference in voltage, and you create a
Speaker 1: pathway directly between the two and then the voltage essentially
Speaker 1: equalizes as soon as it possibly can. And if that
Speaker 1: is on two parts of an electronic device that wasn't
Speaker 1: intended to be connected, you can have some some problems,
Speaker 1: including actual circuitry damage a k a. Frying your electronics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so if you've ever heard about something in electronics hitting water,
Speaker 1: and you've got a whole list of things you're supposed
Speaker 1: to do, and the first one is make sure it's
Speaker 1: powered off as long as you're safe about it. Because
Speaker 1: what we'll get into that specifically, the reason for that
Speaker 1: is because it otherwise the the this current, this the
Speaker 1: circuit can't work the way it was supposed to because
Speaker 1: you've got this conductive fluid messing everything up. Now we
Speaker 1: did say d distilled and de ionized water is different.
Speaker 1: Is different. That's because pure water, absolutely pure water that
Speaker 1: has no ions in it, has no other uh contaminants
Speaker 1: in it, no other particles of stuff. Right, it doesn't
Speaker 1: conduct electricity. So if you've ever heard that water just
Speaker 1: conducts electricity on its own, there's a little technically correct
Speaker 1: pure old H two O. Yeah, there's a little asterisk there, right,
Speaker 1: So uh yeah, if it turns out that there's not
Speaker 1: the stuff in it, then um, it may not cause
Speaker 1: a short circuit, which is good. You still don't want
Speaker 1: to have with electronics. I wouldn't do that on purpose,
Speaker 1: just to test it out. Don't don't go filling your
Speaker 1: swimming pool would distill deionized water and then carry your
Speaker 1: iPhone into the deep end. That's that's not really the
Speaker 1: best solution. Also, that would be really expensive, yeah, and
Speaker 1: also probably wouldn't last very long. I mean you'd soon
Speaker 1: get contaminants in that way. I'm pretty sure that by
Speaker 1: pouring it into a swimming pool you would negate the fact. Anyway,
Speaker 1: if you invited any of my friends over, it would
Speaker 1: definitely negate the effect. Um. Okay, But so some stuff
Speaker 1: to remember about how to deal with electronics once they
Speaker 1: get wet. Before we get into waterproofing technical bits. Um,
Speaker 1: if if a device is a plug in device and
Speaker 1: it is plugged into a wall outlet and it falls
Speaker 1: into some water, don't don't reach into the water. No,
Speaker 1: definitely do Yeah, that would be seriously uh, seriously hazardous,
Speaker 1: and you do not want to do because electricity is
Speaker 1: flown around all willy nilly, um. You want to disc
Speaker 1: anected from the power. But probably the best way to
Speaker 1: do that, if you, if you can, is to just
Speaker 1: break the circuit, just to turn off the entire power
Speaker 1: to that room, right, go to the circuit breaker and
Speaker 1: turn off that circuit before dealing with anything else, because
Speaker 1: you don't want the chance of any electricity arching from
Speaker 1: the source and hitting you. I mean that could even
Speaker 1: if it didn't kill you, it could severely injure you.
Speaker 1: And so the best thing to do would be to
Speaker 1: to trip the circuit breaker if it hadn't already tripped, um,
Speaker 1: but then unplug it from the wall and then remove
Speaker 1: it from the water. Once you don't have any active
Speaker 1: electricity moving through It's not like you're going to have
Speaker 1: like some sort of um residual electricity. Oh yeah, no, no
Speaker 1: no know, once once it's done zapping, it's done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so then you would want to remove the device from
Speaker 1: the water once it once you're shirt's safe. If it's
Speaker 1: a battery operated electronic device, you're probably going to be
Speaker 1: safe just removing it because the voltages there are very low.
Speaker 1: It's not like it's going to be I'm talking about
Speaker 1: like a typical battery up like a mobile device like
Speaker 1: a phone or a watch or a tablet something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not going to have enough voltage there for it
Speaker 1: to really do any harm. You really could just reach
Speaker 1: out and grab it and pull it out. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if for any reason you do have any concern about
Speaker 1: whether there's still some residual electricity going through the outlet
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Heavy duty rubber gloves like like
Speaker 1: the kind like like kitchen gloves or Doctor Horrible cosplay gloves,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, anything that covers any skin that you
Speaker 1: might submerge will help keep you safe. See that's exactly
Speaker 1: why I have mine in my bathroom, but I don't
Speaker 1: tell people that's why I have them in the bathroom.
Speaker 1: I approve of this plan. Um. Also, like wooden or
Speaker 1: plastic salad tongs or chopsticks or anything like that. Would
Speaker 1: you know, a non conductive man, you want to use metal, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be bad. Yeah. Once again, conductivity not not
Speaker 1: your friend. So if it's a battery operated device and
Speaker 1: the battery is removable, take out the battery, you know,
Speaker 1: make sure the device is powered off, take out the
Speaker 1: battery and set it aside. Uh. The longer the battery
Speaker 1: sits in there, and the longer there there's water in
Speaker 1: this device, the worst off it's gonna be. Because Uh,
Speaker 1: one of those short circuits that you could talk about
Speaker 1: is like just imagine a battery where you connect the
Speaker 1: to the two sides of the battery with a direct
Speaker 1: path that burns out a battery. Fact, So you want
Speaker 1: to get that battery out of there, and you want
Speaker 1: to allow the electronic device to dry thoroughly, and that
Speaker 1: can take up to a week or longer. Um. And
Speaker 1: if you're talking about a device that actually plugs into
Speaker 1: the wall, I wouldn't feel comfortable ever telling anyone to
Speaker 1: try it out again. Uh No, I would take that
Speaker 1: to a to a professional. Yeah, because tion or even
Speaker 1: if you are absolutely certain that's dry, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Sometimes those contaminants and water can actually adhere to parts
Speaker 1: of the circuitry, which means that if it could permanently
Speaker 1: change the electrical flow inside the device, which could get
Speaker 1: really sparky, really exactly, so you don't want to mess
Speaker 1: around with that. But if it's battery operated, you know,
Speaker 1: you probably have heard that it's good to put it
Speaker 1: in some sort of material sand or something, some some
Speaker 1: sort of desiccate that will pull out water. Rice is
Speaker 1: probably the most commonly suggested one, But at any rate,
Speaker 1: you want to give it several days, if not a week,
Speaker 1: to let it dry. Once it's dry, then you can
Speaker 1: reconnect the battery to the device and test it out.
Speaker 1: And if the anything in the water has dried on
Speaker 1: the circuit try that's wind the device might be permanently yeah,
Speaker 1: whether you know, it could be perfectly dry that point
Speaker 1: it's just never gonna work again, or it might work fine.
Speaker 1: It kind of depends upon what the purity of the
Speaker 1: water was and how much how long it was submerged,
Speaker 1: um whether or not there were other things in there.
Speaker 1: And once you once you get it to that point,
Speaker 1: you have the actual moment of truth. It'll either work
Speaker 1: or it won't work. And if it doesn't work, you
Speaker 1: probably are gonna have to buy a new one because
Speaker 1: most warranties do not cover water damage specifically because it's
Speaker 1: such a common problem and it's hard to fix. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I you know, I think it's usually considered, um, what
Speaker 1: what's the is negligent? Yes? I think of it as
Speaker 1: an act of claude c l O d's the clumsy fool.
Speaker 1: Most of most problems that relate to me can be
Speaker 1: described like that. So Henry specifically asked about ingress protection. Yes,
Speaker 1: and this is a rating system. Yes, that tells us
Speaker 1: exactly how safe it is to use various electronics around
Speaker 1: water sources. Right, and also physical things like like physical
Speaker 1: like hands or tools. So yeah, ingress. If you're wondering
Speaker 1: what the heck does ingress mean, especially if you play
Speaker 1: the Google game Ingress, it's not the Google game. We
Speaker 1: did a full episode about Ingress the Google game way
Speaker 1: way back. But ingress is an entrance into something. It's
Speaker 1: a way of getting into some sort of enclosure. Ingress
Speaker 1: Protection is created the International Electro Technical Commission, which lots
Speaker 1: of countries belong to, including the United States, and as
Speaker 1: a rating system. And if you look at the rating system,
Speaker 1: you will know how well that particular component is rated
Speaker 1: against intrusion, either by physical stuff or or fluid fluid
Speaker 1: we should say, but yes, water, physical particles versus liquid
Speaker 1: particles exactly, So it's an actual standard. It's not that
Speaker 1: water isn't physical. That's yeah, well, yeah, I know what
Speaker 1: you mean. You mean like like mad like solid matter
Speaker 1: as opposed to liquid. Yeah, you know, we're we're casual
Speaker 1: with the states of matter here at tech stuff stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind. Probably a little more of a
Speaker 1: stickler for it, uh I e C. The the International
Speaker 1: Electrotechnical Commission designates this standard as six zero five to nine,
Speaker 1: so you can look it up if you want to.
Speaker 1: They have the charts and stuff that explain it, but
Speaker 1: we'll go through it, and defines the standard as a
Speaker 1: part providing protection of equipment against certain external influences and
Speaker 1: in any direction, protection against direct contact. So the reason
Speaker 1: why this would be important is multiple reasons. It's one
Speaker 1: to tell you about how robust that particular component is
Speaker 1: to any given type of intrusion, and partly to warn
Speaker 1: you a potential user as to the kind of operating
Speaker 1: conditions this device works under and whether or not. It's
Speaker 1: a good idea for you to reach your big old
Speaker 1: grubby myths in there. Sure. It however, does not cover
Speaker 1: other issues that you could encounter with various devices, such
Speaker 1: as corrosion resistance or the effects of ice exactly. So
Speaker 1: there are other things that can muck up a device
Speaker 1: that don't get covered by this. There are other standards
Speaker 1: that that involves. But English protection really just has two digits.
Speaker 1: The basic i P code has two digits in the
Speaker 1: first digit indicates the protection level against solids like dust.
Speaker 1: That would be the finest of the solids, the least frocks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they actually do. If you're talking about zero, there's no
Speaker 1: protection against a solid substance. A one is I think,
Speaker 1: I think you have to get up to a two
Speaker 1: before you're getting to the point of human fingers. Like
Speaker 1: a one is bigger than essentially the back of the hand.
Speaker 1: If it has an i P of one, it means
Speaker 1: that the back of an average person's hand could come
Speaker 1: into contact with whatever component that is well, possibly with
Speaker 1: getting harmed. Actually, yeah, anything larger than that would not
Speaker 1: be able to come into contact. So yeah, it's all
Speaker 1: about it's all about the covering. If you think of
Speaker 1: it as like a cover. So yeah, the solid numbers
Speaker 1: range from zero, which is no protection at all, so
Speaker 1: you just got a big old open fan. Essentially, the
Speaker 1: Death Star had a lot of I P zero tech.
Speaker 1: You know, they had like all these these walkways with
Speaker 1: no railings. You could fall right into the core. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then if you want to go to the opposite side,
Speaker 1: that would be a six, which is totally protected against
Speaker 1: also known as dust tight, just as water would be
Speaker 1: water tight or air tight. You know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Duct tight is a thing. Yeah. Yeah. The second digit
Speaker 1: is um liquid protection, and that ranges from zero, which
Speaker 1: is no protection at all, to an eight, which means
Speaker 1: that that object would be protected against continuous immersion. Yes,
Speaker 1: and in fact, there are older versions of ingress protections
Speaker 1: that go up to a nine for water. But in
Speaker 1: that case it means that it is perfectly safe from
Speaker 1: water jets at high power from multiple directions simultaneously. So
Speaker 1: essentially a dishwasher, if you were to put it in
Speaker 1: the dishwasher, water would not get into this thing. Um.
Speaker 1: But really, the all those sources I was looking at
Speaker 1: was specifically talking about zero to eight for liquids. So
Speaker 1: if you had something that was rated i P five seven.
Speaker 1: It would mean that that particular device would be dust
Speaker 1: protected but not dust tight, meaning that if you were
Speaker 1: really determined, you could get some dust in there, and
Speaker 1: that it would be protected against temporary immersion and fluid,
Speaker 1: so you could drop it into like like let's say
Speaker 1: that it's a watch and you're washing dishes. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to worry about the watch getting too much water
Speaker 1: in it because it's protected against that, but you wouldn't
Speaker 1: at the same time want to go skin diving with
Speaker 1: the watch. So with these i P ratings, we're not
Speaker 1: just talking about how well a particular component is protected,
Speaker 1: but also how well the device protects us against being clods.
Speaker 1: Getting back into that, so if you have an i
Speaker 1: P component that has low numbers, then you know there
Speaker 1: are components here that you could easily come into contact
Speaker 1: with if you yourself were not careful. So using that
Speaker 1: death Star example, we would see that the rating is
Speaker 1: very low, and we would know this is not a
Speaker 1: safe place for me to be, uh, you know, unobservant.
Speaker 1: I would need to watch my toes wear a hard
Speaker 1: hat and a jet pack. Yeah, and uh, and also
Speaker 1: don't do anything wrong because management on the Death Star
Speaker 1: as a no tolerance policy for mistakes. However, you're of
Speaker 1: chances of rapidly ascending the ranks. They're really high. I
Speaker 1: never thought about it that way. Yeah, if you've ever
Speaker 1: wanted to be an admiral, just wait around a week
Speaker 1: in the Imperial Navy and you'll get there. You might
Speaker 1: not last very long, but you know, advancement is certainly
Speaker 1: an opportunity. So anyway, if your big old machine of
Speaker 1: awesomeness has a huge fan moving at high velocity inside it,
Speaker 1: you probably want to protect against something accidentally being able
Speaker 1: to touch the van. So you would want to make
Speaker 1: sure that that i P rating would be such that
Speaker 1: only specific tools would be able to move through there. Right,
Speaker 1: You wouldn't want anything too large to be able to
Speaker 1: pass through and make contact with the fan. That would
Speaker 1: be dangerous. At the same time, you wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: be dust tight because it would be air tight. Uh,
Speaker 1: And having a huge rotating fan and airtight chamber probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't really help you out. No. Imagine having a computer
Speaker 1: where you have a computer fan that's supposed to help
Speaker 1: spurs heat, but you have no vent. Well, that heat
Speaker 1: is just gonna continue to sec it's just gonna be
Speaker 1: right there in your laptop or a computer. It's not
Speaker 1: going to move. And then eventually got a fried machine,
Speaker 1: as anyone who has worked with me would realize, as
Speaker 1: I somehow managed to get my machine clogged every time
Speaker 1: within a couple of years. It's really just my way
Speaker 1: of getting a new laptop every couple of years. So
Speaker 1: now we go on to the next part of Henry's question.
Speaker 1: I think we've covered ingress protection pretty thoroughly. So what
Speaker 1: does x feet up to x minutes resistance mean? Well,
Speaker 1: I P ratings indicate there's a spectrum of resistance to intrusion,
Speaker 1: right that you you can have uh devices that have
Speaker 1: different levels of resistance. So some devices have no protection
Speaker 1: at all, and some have an incredible design that keeps
Speaker 1: everything clear of any kind of particle or fluid. But
Speaker 1: most fall somewhere in between exactly. So if you're looking
Speaker 1: at x feet up to x minutes, that's kind of
Speaker 1: describing that in between phase. The depth or feet part
Speaker 1: of this is all about water pressure, right, because water
Speaker 1: water has weight, So the deeper you go in a
Speaker 1: body of water, the more weight or a really pressure
Speaker 1: you're going to be subjected to yep, and so your
Speaker 1: device is going to be under that same amount of pressure.
Speaker 1: So if I have a device that's you know, not
Speaker 1: totally water tight, it's very resistant to it, but I
Speaker 1: start adding more and more pressure to it, that might
Speaker 1: mean that it puts puts enough pressure on the device
Speaker 1: to allow water to start to get in, to start
Speaker 1: to seep in. Right. That's why watches, for example, we'll
Speaker 1: have those those depth ratings exactly exactly. They'll say that, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we've tested this to this amount of pressure
Speaker 1: and it is able to be resistant to water at
Speaker 1: that pressure, but beyond that, we cannot promise that you
Speaker 1: won't have a failure of this device. So I gadget
Speaker 1: with a design that resists water intrusion. It may only
Speaker 1: work at surface pressures, meaning that you could be able
Speaker 1: to operate in the rainstorm but not necessarily submerge it
Speaker 1: in water um or you might be able to do
Speaker 1: some snorkeling but not scuba diving with it, or something
Speaker 1: might be splash proof, you know, like like you could
Speaker 1: wash your hands, but you wouldn't want to take a
Speaker 1: shower exactly. Yeah, I always want to take a shower.
Speaker 1: Just went nip that rumor in the bud. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to make sure that you follow those those
Speaker 1: uh those warnings on there. It's only good at X
Speaker 1: number of feet. As for the minutes, again, that kind
Speaker 1: of tells you that a gadget may be able to
Speaker 1: withstand a temporary immersion, like we said in the ingress
Speaker 1: protection uh that you know, if you if it's underwater
Speaker 1: for maybe a minute or two, there's no big deal
Speaker 1: that there's there's probably no uh no opening that water
Speaker 1: could get into easily. But the longer that it's down there,
Speaker 1: the more likely you're going to have a failure of
Speaker 1: one of the protective surfaces. Yeah. So it could just
Speaker 1: be the company really just kind of covering its bases saying, well,
Speaker 1: we know this thing is technically supposed to be water tight,
Speaker 1: but uh, we don't really want to make a claim
Speaker 1: that customer could come back and say, hey, you said
Speaker 1: it was waterproof, I wore it when I went swimming
Speaker 1: and now it doesn't work. It's you could look at
Speaker 1: it a source of some wiggle room as well. Um,
Speaker 1: not necessarily stating that the companies that say this are
Speaker 1: trying to be uh you know, to edge around it.
Speaker 1: It's just that's another possible legally speaking, it's important to
Speaker 1: protect themselves. Absolutely understand that. So, um that those both
Speaker 1: of those elements obviously are really important to determine. Uh,
Speaker 1: whether or not a gadget is going to be capable
Speaker 1: of going into the water and then coming back out
Speaker 1: still working. So how can electronics manufacturers make a gadget waterproof?
Speaker 1: What do they have to look at in order to
Speaker 1: make sure that their device will continue working even if
Speaker 1: it has been exposed to water. Uh, First of all,
Speaker 1: you gotta make sure your materials are waterproof. So that's
Speaker 1: a big first step. Yeah, if you have a smart
Speaker 1: phone and made out of paper towels, probably not going
Speaker 1: to be very waterproof. I don't that would be a
Speaker 1: really I don't want that smartphone. I'm going to pass
Speaker 1: on the paper towel so strong and thoroughly absorbent, but
Speaker 1: not particularly useful for a communication. Yeah, you have to
Speaker 1: make sure that those materials will be able to repel
Speaker 1: water or at least not least not absorb it exactly. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: you also don't want materials that would dramatically expand or
Speaker 1: contract in heat or cold. Yes, because as we know,
Speaker 1: water is not always the same as room temperature, so
Speaker 1: it could be that the device is exposed to a
Speaker 1: fairly dramatic change in temperature. I mean, you know, if
Speaker 1: you were to jump into, say, a mountain lake, might
Speaker 1: be very brisk. Sure even just you know, like if
Speaker 1: if you are hanging out in a mountain lake region
Speaker 1: and it's chilly outside and your your device is contracted
Speaker 1: in ways that that open up a crack somewhere, bad time.
Speaker 1: So that's that's one thing you have to keep in mind.
Speaker 1: Um More more traditional hydrophobic coatings. Hydrophobic of course, just
Speaker 1: meaning water resistant, a repellent, water repellent, I suppose, right,
Speaker 1: um More traditional hydrophobic coatings like Teflon, which is the
Speaker 1: most popular brand name for the material poly tetra floro ethylene,
Speaker 1: Which makes me understand why people usually just say teflon.
Speaker 1: By the way, uh, in case you're curious, she got
Speaker 1: that on the first try. I would not have been
Speaker 1: able to do that. I did. I did have to
Speaker 1: cough before I said it, because I was aware that
Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna be able to take a breath for
Speaker 1: you know, seven or eight minutes, or at least what
Speaker 1: feels like it in the role of that word. Um,
Speaker 1: those can come in very much handy in terms of
Speaker 1: this waterproofing material outer casing kind of stuff. Um, But
Speaker 1: the inner materials do matter too. For example, a weather
Speaker 1: proof speaker might use my lar diaphragms in place of
Speaker 1: the paper ones that are commonly used in indoor speakers, right,
Speaker 1: and those are the part the membrane. Yeah, And of
Speaker 1: course sound is a physical phenomenon. It involves stuff vibrating,
Speaker 1: which then makes air molecules vibrates. So obviously you need
Speaker 1: something that's going to be able to withstand lots of
Speaker 1: vibration and also not absorb a lot of water. If
Speaker 1: it were the paper ones, one that would affect the
Speaker 1: sound and two would weaken the membrane right. Right. So
Speaker 1: as a side note here, because I mentioned the word
Speaker 1: weather proof, a weather proof is another industry term that
Speaker 1: usually it's a little bit separate from the technology sector,
Speaker 1: but it usually indicates a combination of dust and water overall. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: you would also want to eliminate any openings in the
Speaker 1: outer surface, very important for chargeable devices. This is a
Speaker 1: tricky because, yeah, because usually you have a port that
Speaker 1: you plug your charging cable into port is an opening, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you could get water inside of a device that way.
Speaker 1: If you had some waterproof port where it had a
Speaker 1: very specific contact point for your your charging cable, then
Speaker 1: maybe you could you could minimize water intrusion that way,
Speaker 1: but you would also run the risk of anything drying
Speaker 1: inside of it that could interfere. But there are some
Speaker 1: devices that use contact charging points, like my Pebble smart watch,
Speaker 1: not not not just mine, actually all of them. The
Speaker 1: Pebble smart watch has a has a contact charging point.
Speaker 1: It's got a magnetic point and the USB cable that
Speaker 1: comes with it. Uh, it the the part that plugs
Speaker 1: onto the watch also has magnets on it, so it
Speaker 1: connects magnetically and that makes the contact points line up properly,
Speaker 1: and it charges that way, so you can just pull
Speaker 1: them apart and it disconnects. There's nothing plugged into anything.
Speaker 1: But that means that they didn't have to make a port,
Speaker 1: so you can actually wear your your Pebble watch in
Speaker 1: the shower or in the pool or the ocean. I've
Speaker 1: done all of those things, so it works just fine.
Speaker 1: But that it does it's an engineering challenge. You have
Speaker 1: to figure out how to do that and of course,
Speaker 1: it also means that you're charging cable ends up becoming proprietary.
Speaker 1: So let's say you are a claude like me, and
Speaker 1: you and you realize, hey, my pebble smart watches run
Speaker 1: out of juice. I need to uh, I need to
Speaker 1: recharge it. Where the heck is that one USB cable
Speaker 1: that's different from every other USB cable I own? And uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd think I would have put aside a specific place
Speaker 1: for it because that would save me sanity, but I
Speaker 1: have not at any rate. It is an engineering challenge.
Speaker 1: And another is to create those hydrophobic coatings like teflon
Speaker 1: or or nanocoadings even um. And again this means that
Speaker 1: water molecules themselves are upheld by the substance. So you
Speaker 1: probably heard hydrophobic or oleophobic. Oleophobic would be oil repellent.
Speaker 1: So lots of smartphone screens have oleophobic coating so that
Speaker 1: you don't get smudges all over them since they're touch screens. Well,
Speaker 1: hydrophobic just me that the water will kind of beat
Speaker 1: up and roll off. If you've ever treated a windshield
Speaker 1: with something like rainnecks, yeah, that's just a hydrophobic cutting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like the T one thousand is split up
Speaker 1: into a million little pieces and is rolling all over
Speaker 1: your windshield. It is awesome. Uh. Companies like liquid Pel
Speaker 1: have developed procedures to coat electronic components in a fine
Speaker 1: layer of hydrophobic film to protect them from short circuits.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm talking about even the inside of their devices,
Speaker 1: not just the outside. So with this approach, you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry so much about liquid getting into the
Speaker 1: device because the device itself is repelling the water. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. Yeah. The process involves putting your electronic device.
Speaker 1: It's a mail in kind of thing. At this point,
Speaker 1: I think you put they put your electronic device in
Speaker 1: a vacuum chamber and then employ plasma like like ionized
Speaker 1: yas um to spread this vapor of their proprietary chemical
Speaker 1: in a nanometer thick film over and inside the device.
Speaker 1: Yeah and there. I think they only have specific devices
Speaker 1: they cover right now because they Yeah, yeah, because I
Speaker 1: think the vacuum chamber they use is very you know,
Speaker 1: attuned to particular devices. Yes, if they are not built correctly,
Speaker 1: then that would break the thing. Yeah. I think I
Speaker 1: think they cover the Nexus five and I use the
Speaker 1: Nexus four all I have to do is drop that
Speaker 1: nexus four in a puddle of water and next thing
Speaker 1: you know, I get the nexus five. Yeah, don't tell
Speaker 1: my wife I said that. Um, um, you can. You
Speaker 1: can also, well, I mean you can't, but scientifically, we
Speaker 1: as humans can texture the surface of an object to
Speaker 1: repel water, thus kind of in a long, long about
Speaker 1: sort of way, eliminating the need for having a separate
Speaker 1: coating in there. Um. All kinds of research out of
Speaker 1: like the Department of Energy and a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: different facilities across the world have created nanoscale surfaces that
Speaker 1: replicate the self cleaning properties of some plants, specifically lotus leaves,
Speaker 1: and also like insect exoskeleton stuff like that. And and
Speaker 1: by self cleaning, we just mean that they've got these
Speaker 1: we little um nanoscopic cones or bristles that will trap
Speaker 1: air molecules and use that as sort of a nanoscopic
Speaker 1: air hockey table to repel water and and any other
Speaker 1: bits of stuff that you don't want in a thing
Speaker 1: away from a thing that's really cool. Yeah. Well, and
Speaker 1: of course there are lots and lots of companies out
Speaker 1: there that all they do is they make waterproof cases
Speaker 1: for your electronics that basically just snapped together really good, right,
Speaker 1: and they are designed to just be watertight, to just
Speaker 1: keep the water out. So you know that those are
Speaker 1: pretty simple in a way. They're they're simple technology and
Speaker 1: that they're not a lot of components to it. But
Speaker 1: it does mean that you have to engineer it just
Speaker 1: right because water is a tricky thing. It finds a
Speaker 1: way into some of the craziest places. Yes, like like life,
Speaker 1: water finds a way. It's incredibly persistent and anyone who's
Speaker 1: ever had to deal with any kind of water damage
Speaker 1: to anything will agree with that. So, Henry, I hope
Speaker 1: we answered your questions. We thought that this was a
Speaker 1: fun one to tackle. Uh. You know, it's it's cool
Speaker 1: to have a very specific kind of approach to something
Speaker 1: because a lot of the stuff we cover is so general,
Speaker 1: it's so wide open. That turns into just nesting layers
Speaker 1: of all kinds of windows open until my I T
Speaker 1: guy yells at me for breaking my computer. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we have broken the Internet more than once. Here
Speaker 1: at how stuff works. So we are glad that we
Speaker 1: were able to have a very focused discussion on this.
Speaker 1: If any of you have suggestions for future topics. Maybe
Speaker 1: you have another just component of technology that you've always
Speaker 1: wanted to know about, or perhaps there's that company you've
Speaker 1: always been curious about, or that that person in tech
Speaker 1: that you think deserves a full episode. You should let
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