Does Water Have A Taste?

[vmail]

To make yourself feel better, pretend that you are listening to her, that way you will both win

[Caz SR]

But what good would listening do... when this is an internet forum?

[Bibbs]

It depends on the make up of the sensory organ ..

Some animals may be able to taste it better than we can.

Did you know Lemons and Limes have the same taste moecules, just one is "left handed" and the other "right handed" (mirror image of each other) and we can actually tell the difference .. strange huh.

[PaulT]

But isn't that more the sensation of the liquid?

I'm with ya on that

It's such bad form to agree with yourself

If you think that water has no taste, because you cannot taste it, then also consider

Black is a colour even though you cannot see it.

Zero is a number even though you cannot count zero things.

We have silence and holes, even though you cannot hear silence or touch holes.

Likewise, water has a taste even though you cannot taste it.

How many times have you heard at a pub which serves weak beer: "This beer tastes like water!"

I rest my case :D

Paul.

[Fidgits]

actually Paul - Black is not officially a colour - its a shade..

so :P ner ner :P

[Nick SR]

This is a bit of a random question, but I'm currently having this conversation with the girlfreind!... lol

Does water have a taste or is it tasteless?? I thought maybe it did have a taste, but that was because of the chemicals in it... but water from a river/stream etc has a taste.

Anyone?

It deffinately has a taste, the water here in scarborough is !Removed! awful

Nick

[Fidgits]

But thats not the water your tasting - otherwise, well, it would taste like any other water...

[Caz SR]

If I didn't agree with myself, my mind would be in turmoil. I don't call that bad form, I call that sensible. ;)

Water - A Drug?

[Kev Mc]

actually Paul - Black is not officially a colour - its a shade..

so :P ner ner :P

It's actually an absence of colour apparantly

[Bibbs]

actually Paul - Black is not officially a colour - its a shade..

so :P ner ner :P

It's actually an absence of colour apparantly

Depends if you are talking about light or dyes ..

With light, white is all colours, black is a lack of colour.

With dyes, you can have prety much any colour (Black paint for example).

With the taste/smell of water .. it's all dependant on what our tounges are set to react to. It's like UV and IR "light" .. it's defo there, just we can't "see" it ..

[MIP]

There are words to describe an absense of anything, be it light, sound, texture, taste, movement. That doesn't mean that absense is actually somthing. If water tastes of nothing, it triggers none of our taste nerves (just temperature and pressure), it has no taste. To attribute somthing to nothing or zero negates its existance, untill that value changes.

[vmail]

you can still get black light

black still has a value(IT) 0x00000000

[MIP]

True black is an absense of any light. Photon count= 0, It is no light. Light has ceased to be, it is no more, it has joined the invisible choir, This is an ex-light!

0 is a value. It still is a description of nothing, null existance.

[right-on]

Yes and no. It has a taste even if it is river/stream water but it will only have that taste because of the minerals it has picked up from the rocks it has passed through or over.

Went pot-holing in the Yorkshire Dales. After we returned to the surface, the instructer told us that there was a dead sheep in the stream feeding into the cave-system - that water had a taste! and it wasn't just mineral

[Al J]

This is turning into a science lesson. Well, fair enough. It's what I do... :D

Ah but does Oxygen have a taste? Would two elements that had no taste, mixed together = taste?

Hydrogen has no taste, neither does Oxygen but mixing them together doesn't make water. Causing them to react together to make a new compound, water, does. A compound doesn't behave like the elements that make it. Sodium Chloride (common table salt) for example, is vital to life but Sodium is a very dangerous metal and Chlorine is a very dangerous gas! Salt is dangerous in large quantities but I'd rather have it in a meal than the elements that combine together to produce it.

actually Paul - Black is not officially a colour - its a shade..

so :P ner ner :P

It's actually an absence of colour apparantly

Depends if you are talking about light or dyes ..

With light, white is all colours, black is a lack of colour.

With dyes, you can have prety much any colour (Black paint for example).

With the taste/smell of water .. it's all dependant on what our tounges are set to react to. It's like UV and IR "light" .. it's defo there, just we can't "see" it ..

Yes, black is indeed, the total absence of light. If an object could absorb all the colours of the white light spectrum, it would disappear. Think black holes in space. Blacker than the blackness that surrounds them. Think the Predator movie! Black paint or dyes contain a mixture of pigments so they reflect other colours in different amounts too. Even before they fade, a black top and black trousers often look different when matched together. It's also why you can't touch up your black car with any old black paint you have hanging around.

Oh and zero is a number. I found this on the Interweb...

Yes, zero is a number but you are not alone if you wonder why. Indian mathematicians first came up with the number idea around 650 AD. Originally, perhaps as early as 200 AD, they used zero as a placeholder in another number. For example, in our notation: 216 is a different number than 2016. This use of zero advanced trade, commerce, and bookkeeping but does not qualify zero as a number. Zero, in its place-keeping function, is a kind of punctuation mark to help us interpret numbers correctly.

Before anyone asks, though, infinity is not a number.

Back to taste. When our taste buds are stimulated, they pick up sweet, sour salt or bitter. If they pick up none of them, as in the case of pure water, you would sense a lack of taste, not taste itself.

Here's a cute little experiment you can do.

clicky

Try putting something sweet on the "salt" areas of your tongue and vice-versa. Weird, eh?

Oh and just to cloud the issue, remember that your brain doesn't just deal with the taste receptors alone. It adds the smell of the food or drink to the experience. Sometimes colour comes into it too.

Imagine your favourite food. Strawberries?

Ok, now imagine them dark brown and smelling of cat wee. Think it would still taste the same?

[Kev Mc]

Oh and just to cloud the issue, remember that your brain doesn't just deal with the taste receptors alone. It adds the smell of the food or drink to the experience.

Yeah, that's true, another simple experiment you can do is eat 1 flavour of crisp & smell another flavour, the crisp you eat will taste like the crisp you smell.

[vmail]

True black is an absense of any light. Photon count= 0, It is no light. Light has ceased to be, it is no more, it has joined the invisible choir, This is an ex-light!

0 is a value. It still is a description of nothing, null existance.

no, no, no,

Black lights look just like normal fluorescent lamps or incandescent light bulbs, but they do something completely different. Switch one on, and white clothes, teeth and various other things glow in the dark, while the bulb itself only emits faint purple light.

These devices are all around us -- in clubs, science museums, amusement parks and teenagers' bedrooms, among other places -- but to most people, they're a total mystery.

[jaxx]

oxygen does have a taste.. well more of a smell, but only pure oxygen, the nitrogen and other cack in the atmosphere completely dulls it, but if you breath it purem its got a slight sweet smell that leaves an aftertaste on the back of your tounge

and black lights are ULTRAVIOLET hence the purple tinge, the fact that anything white glows up is the super-reactance of the lightwaves reflecting back

[Al J]

From the same source you used, vmail (How Stuff Works)

The "black" glass tube itself blocks most visible light, so in the end only benign long-wave UV-A light and some blue and violet visible light pass through.

So, it's UV (invisible) light with a bit of blue and violet light getting through. Not actually black light.

edit: Oops, pretty much as Jaxx said!

[jaxx]

'black light' was a term form the 80's when it was a 'new fad'

and you can tell water from the fluid and becuase its got NO taste youll naturally says its water, as anything else would have a taste of some sort

take water thats gone stale.. that tastes mingin, but thats only because dust and crap in the atmosphere have mixed into it

[Al J]

and bacteria.

[jaxx]

...and that :D

[knightrider]

if it has not taste then what ur tasteing is nothing so u tatsed that it has no taste, so it has a tatse

im with you on this ed!

[jaxx]

but how you taste 'nothing', im sat here neither eating or drinking, therefore im tasting nothing? does that mean ive got a gob full of water?

[Blue84]

I say that it's more the sensation of the liquid that you can feel...we have a small tap next to our main kitchen tap which gives us filtered water whenever we want by taking it off the mains supply and filtering it through it's system. That is the only water I can drink as otherwise I get ill and it does have a taste. I can't define it, but I think that where we live in a hard water area there must be something in it which does give it a very slight taste.