On the BBC news page today. Less than 4 minutes to watch, probably a bit longer to ponder
https://www.bbc.com/ideas/videos/why-water-is-one-of-the-weirdest-things-in-the-uni/p06y2c9k
Water. Who knew?
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Fascinating stuff – one thing that confused me, he says that water came to Earth from outer space, yet later says that every object in the solar system has water in it [on it], so why are the boffins so sure that the water wasn’t already here? Or are they suggesting that all the water on every object wasn’t indigenous but came from somewhere else and if so, where?
The oxygen was made in exploding stars and joined with Hydrogen somewhere along the way. It would have been part of the dust that made up the solar system but the high temperatures as the earth formed would have driven it off planet. Basically boiled away. Then settled on solar debris as ice and bombarded onto the Earth. Which by this time was cool enough for it to stay. All over a very long time.
Pub fact: water is not wet.
Not scientifically speaking, anyway. “Wet” liquids do not form drops.
Water molecules have a “bond dipole moment” and are attacted to each other by a tiny uneven distribution of sub-atomic electrcal charge. This is why water forms drops and exhibits capilary action, and why ice forms a lattice structure (and so is less dense than liquid water).
The perfect opportunity to post this old ad featuring Euston Films royalty, Detective Chief Inspector Haskins (Garfield Morgan) from Ver Sweeney and Dave the Winchester Club barman (Glynn Edwards) from Minder.
Also: Philip Ball’s “H2O: A Biography Of Water” is a fascinating read, if you wanted more detail..
and another thing – why is the ice that you buy in bags at the shop not as good as ice in pubs? I suspect it contains air, or summat
…And, hands up if you’ve bought a mineral water and then put frozen tap water in it
Jupiter.
The ultimate version of Smoke on the Water.
Here’s another weird fact. Hot water and cold water sound different when poured and most people can tell the difference between them just by listening:
https://www.npr.org/2014/07/05/328842704/what-does-cold-sound-like
Back in the day, if a school kid wrote to Unilever and asked nicely, they would post you a splendid set of monographs from their boffins on a number of subjects. The pitch was at science undergraduate level, and they covered topics like Thermoplastics in some depth. They sent me a whole pile of them, around a dozen in all. By far the best was the one titled just “Water”, it was a brilliant summation of just how weird and surprising the stuff is.