Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish,
a weekly podcast this week coming to you from the Soho Theatre in central London.
My name is Dan Schreiber.
I am sitting with James Harkin, Andy Murray, Anna Chazinski, and once again, we have our four favorite facts.
We're sat around our microphones, and in no particular order, here we go.
Starting with you, James Harkin.
Okay, my fact this week is that firefighters use wetter water than we do.
Is that in everyday life as well, just cleaning their teeth and having a shower?
No, just for putting out fires.
So what do you mean by wetter water?
Well, it's just about how weird water is really.
Apparently, if you put certain polymers into water,
there is less friction in the pipe, so it shoots out of the pipe quicker.
So, and it's called a wetting agent, and it's to make water wetter.
Did someone notice that it was going really slowly out of the pipe,
and sort of hanging around, and how much faster does it go?
Well, they use it in oil as well, and in the Alaskan Pipeline,
they put this stuff in, and it reduces pumping costs by up to 50%.
Because it pumps up more in a short time.
You don't want to mix up the oil and the water if you're a firefighter as well.