SWR: Taste of Heavy Water..

WINE TALK
1

I’m sure you’ve all been dying to know:

That heavy water (D2O) tastes sweeter than normal (H2O) water.
That was a subject that was debated back in the '30’s/'40’s among scientists. They claimed no difference. But what the heck would those smart-a$$ Scientists know??
I’ve actually taken (well… sneaked) a small sip of D2O up at Argonne long time ago. Tasted the same to me as distilled H2O. Sorry… no TN!!
Tom

2 Likes
2

In college, Harold Urey would often show up at the campus greasy spoon burger joint in the woods for lunch. He’d sometimes join us for lunch. Not sure what he was drinking :wink:

Pretty amazing to think that deuterium was only discovered in 1931. Not much more than a decade later we had learned enough to control fusion, and build atomic bombs.

3

Ah…PROGRESS! [oops.gif]

4

I too have tasted heavy water. Same. 10% denser though. Would be fun to swim in.

5

There’s no swimming in the heavy water, no singing in the acid rain
Red alert

6

Home made amino acids?

1 Like
7

Well, I was thinking D2O, since he discovered deuterium, but that’s even better! A primordial smoothie!

8

Well, use of deuterium (and tritium) was more like two decades later.

-Al

9

Really? Controlling fusion and building atomic bombs in 1941?

As usual your are remarkably wrong.

10

Oops, typo, meant to write fission.

11

Bullshit

12

is it just me or is there a lot of hostility on this board in the last couple of days. Maybe I’m missing some kind of inside jokes.

13

Could be the weather, in=between spring, or maybe they own too many biotech stocks?

14

As a huge chemistry nerd (major in college, former high school chemistry teacher, chemistry lab researcher, and biomedical engineering masters) I have always admired the DIY chemistry experiments of Cody on YouTube. His video suggests that heavy water does in fact taste sweet and blinds his girlfriend as a demonstration;

I recommend watching his other videos if you are into this sort of thing.

Irrigation with heavy water to increase detectable sweetness without changing residual sugar??? Probably not economically viable.

15

Livermore Valley wine has elevated levels of tritium. It partly came through rainfall, so it’s part of the terroir. Some European wines have higher levels, though.

-Al