DailyDirt: We're Still Discovering New Forms Of Water
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Water is one of the most important substances for life. Although it’s a pretty simple molecule, water has some surprising and complex characteristics. (eg. Ice floats on water.) We see water everyday, but we probably don’t think too much about its unique chemical properties (ahem, it’s not organic, but it’s technically true that it doesn’t contain fat or sugar). Here are just a few more scientific tidbits on dihydrogen monoxide.
- Water can be supercooled well below its typical freezing point, but its structure at temperatures between -41 °C and -113 °C hasn’t been studied until recently. The trick is using femtosecond X-ray laser pulses and shooting them at supercooled water droplets just before the water freezes. [url]
- According to computer modeling, supercooled (virtual) water can split into two different phases. Virtual water molecules under certain pressures and temperatures can assemble in (at least) two different ways, forming a less dense and more dense phase. Finding experimental evidence of this prediction is the next step…. [url]
- Nebraska Ice is the nickname for “Two Dimensional Bilayer Ice I” — a form of water that contracts instead of expanding when freezing. Three dimensional ice has 15 known crystalline forms, and two dimensional ice has 2 known frozen structures. [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: chemistry, dihydrogen monoxide, ice, nebraska ice, science, supercooling, water
Comments on “DailyDirt: We're Still Discovering New Forms Of Water”
Here is a cool party trick with my favorite form of water…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0fURJg-K0A
Re: Re:
What a waste of, well, lousy beer.*
*Lousy beer defined as any beer that requires the addition of a seasoning agent, ie: citrus ((like wedge of lime or lemon or a squeeze of something in the beer(citrus is one of the four basic seasonings along with pepper (freshly ground, please), salt, and MSG) (the purpose of seasoning is to enhance the flavor in other foods, ie: ‘bring out’ the flavor and should not be tasted in or of themselves, unless purposefully so, according to classical thinking), other things spices, herbs, sauces, and everything else is some derivation of flavor enhancement or additive)) Now, beers made from fruit, or that stand on their own, yet become different with some additions are a different story.
OK, I am prejudiced, and have a preference for, in this order, Pilsners, high alcohol IPA’s, IPA’s, other Ales and derivations, Stout (must be ‘chew-able’), then lastly full bodied lagers. Which eliminates about 90% of all American brews (by a guesetimate of volume sold, not number of breweries (big fan of craft beer, small brewery or other peoples brewing)) which leaves out each and every one of the ‘top selling’ beers in the US (sorry, last checked that fact about 20 years ago).
TIL water is not organic
it’s not organic
While fact checking this, today I learned that the split in the periodic table isn’t into metal/organic, it is into metal/non-metal.
I always thought organic compounds were those including the top right corner elements (which would include water) but in fact organic compounds are those that include carbon (so water is in fact not organic)
Re: TIL water is not organic
Unless Congress or your state government passes a law making it “organic” 🙂
Re: TIL water is not organic
Compounds do not appear in the periodic table at all. Only elements do. Try as hard as you might, you won’t find water anywhere there.
Re: Re: TIL water is not organic
I think he meant that he understood organic compounds as being those compounds which include one or more of the elements in the top-right corner, and that since water does include such an element, it would be an organic compound.