“Why is water wet?”

[GordMay]

... and other interesting stuff about this unique liquid.
➥ Ingenious Richard Saykally Tells Us Why Water Is Wet

See also ➥ Water-like anomalies as a function of tetrahedrality | PNAS

[JPA Cate]

Wow, Gord, that second link is too deep for me!

Interesting stuff. Just put me at the intellectual level of the toddlers, I'm afraid.

Ann

[Wotname]

^^ Crikey Ann, even the first link was tough going for me , I must be a babe in arms.

[Don C L]

if there is magic on this planet, it is contained in... tetrahedrality? I like Eiseley's better....
one for the desktop?
https://quotefancy.com/quote/1174549...ained-in-water

[thinwater]

If we use definitions (always a good place to start)... what else could it be?

Asking why water has specific properties makes more sense.

wet
adjective
adjective: wet; comparative adjective: wetter; superlative adjective: wettest
1.
covered or saturated with water or another liquid.
"she followed, slipping on the wet rock"
synonyms:damp, moist, soaked, drenched, saturated, sopping, dripping, soggy; waterlogged
"wet clothes"

[Dave_S]

Talking of physics....

These are interesting.

1/. Two slit experiment. https://youtu.be/A9tKncAdlHQ

2/. Quantum entanglement. https://youtu.be/IMWo-rhlpmQ

[jimbunyard]

Originally Posted by thinwater

If we use definitions (always a good place to start)... what else could it be?

Asking why water has specific properties makes more sense.

wet
adjective
adjective: wet; comparative adjective: wetter; superlative adjective: wettest
1.
covered or saturated with water or another liquid.
"she followed, slipping on the wet rock"
synonyms:damp, moist, soaked, drenched, saturated, sopping, dripping, soggy; waterlogged
"wet clothes"

Exactly what I thought after slogging through the first one.

Saykally might as well have told his daughters 'because I said so' as telling them 'strong tetrahedral bonding', given their rote responses to their teachers later questioning.

Perhaps a more accurate answer, given the rest of the interview, would have been 'because it's not ice' or 'because it's not vapor'.

By the way, though I'm not an 'official' scientist (my opinion is, if one's human, one is a de facto scientist), it seems he might have actually answered the question toward the end, with this statement

"... the hydrogen bond in water lives for a few picoseconds—10e-12 seconds—and these hydrogen bond structures of water are rearranging very rapidly so you don’t have water clusters existing as isolated entities in water..."

but since there's no discussion of molecular 'bonding', tetrahedral or otherwise, I'm not sure.


The second article certainly had more information, most of which led to more questions (a good thing) than answers; all the math was beyond me, but one sentence in the abstract stood out, in that it seems to say that the answer to the question 'why is water wet?' is, more properly, 'we're not exactly sure..."

"However, it has remained elusive how the degree of tetrahedrality controls the shape of the phase diagram and the anomalies"

where 'phase diagram' is referring to a description of the anomalies shared by water and other 'non-ordinary' liquids...

Yeah, a cherry-pick, but the paper is pretty dense stuff...

[OldManMirage]

That's some interesting stuff alright. Water has always amazed me with its properties. Almost the only element that increases in volume as it freezes, which is such an important factor to life here on earth.

I love a particular line in the first article about surface tension. "theory is outdated and over the years experiments have accumulated that clearly demonstrated that some ions prefer to be at the surface rather than in the bulk."

I never realized ions could have a preference ! Lol. Next thing you know they'll be making committees and forming political opinions !



If you really want to have your mind blown start trying to figure out where gravity comes from, or why its there in the first place !

[transmitterdan]

The gravity question is easy. Gravity comes from the displacement of space. The more space (nothingness) matter displaces the greater the gravity. A sudden change in the space displaced by matter causes gravity to change rapidly and this creates ripples in gravity which travel out in waves like tossing a rock into a pond.

To really stretch the mind, what is space (nothingness) and how does it know it's been displaced by matter to create gravity?

[IdoraKeeper]

You guys are missing the point that Gord is slyly making. In Thunder Bay water is commonly not wet..? It's this icky white stuff. He just wishes it was wet..

[IdoraKeeper]

You guys are missing the point that Gord is slyly making. In Thunder Bay water is commonly not wet..? It's this icky white stuff. He just wishes it was wet..

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by IdoraKeeper

You guys are missing the point that Gord is slyly making. In Thunder Bay water is commonly not wet..? It's this icky white stuff. He just wishes it was wet..

So his water has formed into 6 molecules forming a circular pattern stacked on top of each other.

Here you go.....

https://www.autobarn.com.au/red-line...ink-355ml-12oz

[GordMay]

... In Thunder Bay water is commonly not wet ...

Indeed!

White Water Canoeing (Thunder Bay Style) ➥ http://www.cruisersforum.com/gallery...r&imageuser=79

[er9]

so what he is saying to us sailors is that all we have to do is develop a bottom coatings that can rearrange tetrahedral order locally, bind hydrogen directionally a micron or two from the hull, supress the phase diagram to optimize anomalous behaviors at a local level and we can do like 30kts in 3kts of wind. simple really...

[Wotname]

^^ and with no bottom paint required