On Friday, November 22, 2002, at 09:11 PM, Stuart Saunders wrote: > Jeremy, > The only components I can think of that are susceptible to water > are speakers, if they have paper cones, and I doubt that any laptop > speakers have paper cones. > Battery packs might be susceptible because they are ultrasonically > welded together and it might be hard to get water out if it is > submerged > for time. Also electrolysis as batteries would invariably be charged. > But easy to test ok/not ok. > > BTW, pure water is not an eletrolyte. Beer is only a mild eletroloyte.
generally speaking, most all water is not pure. even so, pure H20 is almost impossible to have -- even in more-or-less pure water, trace hydroxide and spare hydrogen still roam around in enough quantity to throw off a chemist's calculations. the water one drinks is no where near pure, and most bottled waters, for instance, actually have salts and other electrolytes added to them. your tap water has things like fluorine, several variants of chlorine, and moderate amounts of various salts... ask anyone you know of who maintains a sizable aquarium. it's not only about electrolytes, metals corroding, etc. impure water (read: virtually all water) is a fairly good conductor -- the presence of impure water or other conductors can short logic board components. > What components in the iBook were damaged by the water? Did they > try to clean? Were they shown to be damaged or was that just the tech > say so? as you pointed out in your previous post, it's not the water, per se, that does the damage. and most circuitry will not be fried if not powered on when encountering the spill. however, if someone spills something in their laptop, chances are fairly high they were using it at the time. i've been doing service on macs for most of a decade. for every person who's come to me and said "yeah, i unplugged it immediately and everything's ok", i've had at least a half dozen people come to me saying they unplugged it immediately, but now it doesn't work. hard drives, for what it's worth, are probably the most common device to fail after a spill. moisture on the platters can cause data corruption at best, and complete failure of the media at worst. the metal (i don't recall offhand what they're using these days) is not very friendly with water. also, you suggested that someone might use a blow dryer to dry off a wet circuit board. this is incorrect, and horribly bad advice. the added heat of the blow dryer can damage chips in the same way that lingering with a solder iron while soldering might -- and there's an added risk, too. the air flowing out of many blow dryers may have a slight electric charge. some chips are not tolerant of static electricity. strike that. MOST chips are not tolerant of static electricity. why do you think most service techs ground themselves thoroughly before handling electronics components? -- G-Books is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Check our web site for refurbished PowerBooks | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-Books list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-books.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-books%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
