When I drop my phone in the toilet, or dive with my phone in my pocket, or spill water on my notebook, what happens to it? Why does it stop working? Is rice any better than just letting it dry?
In: Technology
Pure water generally will not, so long as the electronic is off. In fact they wash circuit boards with pure water in factories.
And even with less than pure water, generally washing your unpowered electronics will be fine so long as you wipe it down such that there is no water left on it.
Its the impurities in the water that cause issues. If you wet your electronics and leave them to dry, chances are that water has impurities in it that don’t leave when it dries off. This can cause short circuits and all kind of nuisance. If left long enough, it can also cause corrosion of some electronic contacts, which firstly increases impurities in the water and secondly might cause the wire there to no longer contact.
With modern electronics things are more complicated. Its hard to wipe down some parts with “internal areas” like solenoids, transformers, etc. Electronics are also often hidden inside cases which makes cleaning them of all water more difficult. Wiping water down after it is spilled generally takes the impurities with it, letting it dry does not.
Powered electronics are worse, there could be voltage going to places that it shouldn’t go as a result of water spilling, which breaks some electrical components. The voltage also can turn some impurities that otherwise wouldn’t conduct into ions that do, and corrode certain contacts.
Long story short, I could take the motherboard out of my computer and wash it down with water if I were able to wipe down every nook and cranny in it afterwards. I cannot, so I do not.
Water (or more accurately the impurities within it) conducts electricity, so when electronics get wet the water redirects the electricity within the device resulting in electrical faults. Sometimes an electronic device may work again after it has been dried, but if it isn’t properly dried or the misdirected electricity shorted components within the device it may be permanently affected.
No one has answered the rice question. Rice is hygroscopic, meaning it greedily absorbs water.
If you take a shower without the bathroom fan on, the whole room becomes very humid. In the same way, drying out an electronic device in a sealed baggy won’t work because the moisture will make humidity and then the water will stop evaporating. The rice provides a place for the water to go as it slowly evaporated from the item you want to dry. This keeps the air dry and makes the item dry out more quickly. The idea is to use a lot of rice, because more rice can greedily gobble up more water faster. And you want to dry the object out as fast as possible.
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