I had an argement with a friend yesterday

Hi,

My friend thinks that spitting milk on a laptop (by accident while the lapop is on) is not as catastrophic as spitting water on it. While I think it's the same, either way you need a new motherboard.

So what do you think?

 

You’re right and wrong, in that order. Just about any liquid is conductive and can screw up the electronics. However just about every notebook keyboard has a small pan under the keys to help prevent liquids and crumbs from falling on the main board, so after it dries take the keyboard and catch pan out and wash it.

 

The problem is there is trace of dried milk on the motherboard. some of its conductors have been touch by the milk!

 

Was the milk fresh or outdated? It really makes a diffference.

 

I think if your friend enjoys spitting milk on his laptop, you let him. And hope he will soon learn a very expensive lesson about electricity and slightly salinated liquids.

 

Did you also have an argument on the correct spelling of the word "argement"?

Or any other liquid for that matter.

 

Thanks for correcting my spelling. No boby enjoys breaking his computer, it was an accident, a stupid accident.

really funny...

 

Wrong. If his friend splashed pure water on his laptop, he should not be worried at all. The keywords here: pure water. In other words, free of ionized particles of dissolved substances usually found in tap and spring water. So no, not all liquids are conductive, and some are even used as insulators.

 

the problem is that with pure, deionized/distilled water is that it's very reactive, and will dissolve all kinds of things, including the hand gunk and crumbs you have on your keyboard, and dust, as well as other soluble materials that may be on the electronic parts, so will very quickly become re-ionized. I would highly recommend against doing so. In theory it works, but in practice, no way in heck.

 

True in theory, Gator...but....

Absolutely. There is no doubt about this.

Perhaps it just isn't worth the risk, OP, to "spit" (or "spill"?) water or milk on electronics.

 

The only way to know for sure is to try it.

DISCLAMER: I am not responsible for any damage caused by lack of common sense or general stupidity.

 

Besides making my head explode this thread reminded me of a video I watched of someone OCing their desktop by filling the (custom-made) tower with vegetable oil.

 

There's this guy who thought the PCI express connectors on his 7800GTX were "scissor lines," since they looked like the little scissor lines that came on origami and stuff like that.

So, he took a pair of scissors and cut off the PCI connector at the bottom of the 7800GTX. He then proceeded to go to a forum and ask,

"My 7800GTX isn't working. My friend said the lines looked like scissor lines, so I cut them off. Here's a picture of what I did. Please help me!"

 

GAME OVER

 

What ever happened to good old natural selection?

 

Unfortunately we are no longer required to hunt and kill our own food and the riskiest things that kid has done is probably post on the intarweb. If you've got rich parents, you can be served on a silver platter...

 

Expensive lessons are the ones that people learn the best Hopefully he was made to pay for it himself. And his friend got a punch to the nose.

 

Talk about being intellectually challenged I wonder at what point did he actually think that you are supposed to cut computer components with a scissors did the box come with cut here instructions And I am sure that cutting that circuit board could not have been as easy as cutting paper. Once he saw that why didn't he stop...this is insane to the max!
But I needed a good laugh...

 

I thought that distilled water is just like rain water and thus it does not contain any minerals. So how can it be reactive and damaging?

 

LOL omg his friend is awesome. I wish I'd thought of that, seriously one of my friends is completely computer ignorant---but convinced he knows better---and if he wasn't so damned broke right now I'd suggest something like that and see what happens.

 

milk would be worse because even after it evaporates it would leave residue

 

Eh...actually a few months ago I attended an entry level physics lecture with a friend (wasn't my class, just my friend's) and the prof rigged up a wire, battery, and light bulb contraption and stuck it in both salt water and DI water. Now he did this by hand, with no gloves or anything, and was lecturing while he was doing this. And he stuck the contraptions in the water for almost a minute each. Now maybe we were just "lucky", but while the light lit up in the salt water it never did do so in the DI water. So no questions about the solubility of water, but it's a question of how fast and how quickly the user shuts down the computer and let it dry. Milk on the other hand will leave residue as stamar pointed out, and will gunk up your computer.

Besides, the original point of my post was to point out that not all matter in liquid form is conductive. This is especially true if the liquid is a non-solvent, or if the material immersed is non-soluble. I believe people have immersed laptops in oil(!!!) for cooling purposes and have them run just fine. Given the choice between pure water and milk, I would choose to take my chances with the water.

 

The point of what is being said about the water is that the things that are on your keyboard or your motherboard that you don't know about are going to dissolve into the water very quickly, and make it conductive.

 

OK, i can tell by my pesional expiriens that it is not so dangerouse. I did spilled a whole glass of milk once on my laptom while i was playing online, what happend is that my keybord did become all strange like for example when i pressed space computer reacted as space+enter and stuff like that so i was force to finnish my online match on mouse only, but after i did shut down my computer, opened it, cleaned up and let it dry, it work very well, and working still, writing this messege on it right now

 

That's promessing.
I didn't check my friend's laptop, but he's saying after the incident his laptop lost all sign of life...!

 

plus, ionized water is very rare to come by, unless you happen to work in a chemistry lab