What you should not do:
Experts have for years pointed out that’s a bad idea – and now Apple is officially warning users not to do it.
“Don’t put your iPhone in a bag of rice. Doing so could allow small particles of rice to damage your iPhone,” the company says in a recent support note spotted by Macworld. Along with the risk of damage, testing has suggested uncooked rice is not particularly effective at drying the device.
What you should do:
If your phone isn’t functioning at all, turn it off right away and don’t press any buttons. The next steps depend on your specific circumstances, but broadly speaking: dry it with a towel and put it in an airtight container packed with silica packets if you have them. Don’t charge it until you’re sure it’s dry.
The same way the water does; by causing shorts.
Except that rice is an insulator and has no physical way to get to anything electrical to begin with.
It’s not necessarily the rice itself doing anything, but dirt and particulates on the rice which are conductive and small enough to get inside the device.
If your phone is wet, then it’s already been soaked in a conductive material. Putting it in a bowl of dry rice isn’t going to hurt anything.
Water will dry; dirt and shit won’t evaporate if it gets inside the device.
What sort of conductive dirt are we talking about?
Do you believe that dirt is made up of a single substance? There are salts and metals in dirt.
Salts are not conductive when dry. There are no metals in metallic form in soil.
There certainly is in small little pieces that have been pulverized from various shit like erosion. Run a magnet through some dirt and watch it pick up tiny bits of iron.
Rice absorbs moisture. The moisture might make it more conductive.