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A Water Molecule's Chemical Formula Isn't Really H20
hackwrench writes "According to this article in Physics News Update, a water molecule's chemical formula is really not H2O, at least from the perspective of neutrons and electrons interacting with the molecule for only attoseconds (less than 10-15 seconds). According to new and recent experiments, neutrons and electrons colliding with water for just attoseconds will see a ratio of hydrogen to oxygen of roughly 1.5 to 1, so a more accurate formula for water under these circumstances would be H1.5O."
Good thing I never paid attention in high school chemistry, or I'd be all confused now... ;)
H20, H1.5O, HwhateverO. It still tastes great!
Isn't H1.5O illegal nomenclature? Shouldn't it be 2H30? Mabe cp30?
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Well, as long as it's still wet, there's no reason to panic.
More than enough BS
75% H2O
25% H3O
25% Oh
So what is the big deal?
is now H2O.99999999
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
You're tasting the chemicals added to it. Mmmmm.... chemicals.
Bah! The interpretation given this research is absurd. If I invented a new machine to count the legs on cows, and my machine said that typical cows had three legs each, what would we conclude? That we'd been wrong about cows all these years, or that my machine wasn't working quite the way I'd expected it to?
In the present case, a better headline would have been something like "Unexpected effect hides some protons in neutron & electron scattering experements."
-- MarkusQ
Of course it's wrong! Now they'll have to update all the chemistry textbooks, and of course all the old editions will be worthless now. Ah HA!
;-P
What they don't tell you is that they got a bunch of other "corrections" under their sleeve. You know, because in a year or so they're going to need another excuse to roll out a new edition.
Quite similar to Microsoft's "pay us to upgrade, so you can patch up the bugs we created in the first place!" biz model, actually.
Just kidding!
Clearly their test samples were contaminated with dihydrogenmonoxide.
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That should be 10^-15 seconds, not 10-15 seconds.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
The spin in the article is misleading. What's actually happening is that the interaction cross-section between electron and neutron beams and the hydrogen in water (and in things like hexane) is lower than expected relative to the interaction cross-section with oxygen or carbon.
The conjecture about why the phenomenon occurs (entanglement of protons) is interesting, but they're going to need to find a plausible mechanism and confirm that it's happening before we really know what's going on.
H-2-WHOA!
Q.
Insert Signature Here
It's not "H20", and regardless of what this research is, it's accepted as "H2O". The "O" is for "oxygen", you know... water isn't "20 H's"
Does the density of water support this? Water "weighs" 1 gram per cubic centimeter. I think I am going to start counting... give me a sec ok?
;)
H-2-0, H-3-0, H-1.5-0 I don't care.
But consider yourselves warned: Leave my caffeine molecule alone!
See this lengthy thread from years ago.
Actually, an attosecond is 10e-18, not 10e-15. 10e-15s would be a femtosecond (and 10e-12 is a picosecond). Yes, I know that they say an attosecond is 'less than 10e-15sec', but it is misleading.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
How the hell do you have HALF of a hydrogen nucleus? .5 protons? ...so it's being reduced to quarks for a little while now?!
the definition of a molecule is "The smallest particle of a substance that retains the chemical and physical properties of the substance and is composed of two or more atoms."
Take one water molecule and it will be H2O What comes into play when multiple particles collide has nothign to do with anything
NJ Local Music Scene
For instance, if they are just shooting electrons and neutrons at water and counting how many hit hydrogen nuclei and how many hit oxygen nuclei, you would expect a larger number than normal to hit oxygen since the nucleus is larger (three times the protons and neutrons of hydrogen). They do say "25% fewer protons than expected", but they don't say what they expected or why.
Also, did they have the water in a vacuum chamber? If not, there would be dissolved gasses present in the water that their beam could hit as well. I didn't notice any count for Nitrogen so they must not have done it in a glass sitting on a table, but they don't say.
Did reading this remind anyone else of Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut? Makes me imagine the entire world is freezing over because of this discovery.
Now, I'm curious. Think anything bad will happen if you drink it in those 10-15 seconds?
Your second grade teacher may have taught you that water is H20, but she neglected to mention that water is in an equilbrium between H20 and H + OH. Its typically thought that the coefficient of seperation of water is pretty insigifnicant, along the lines of 10^-14.
Meaning that if the water has a pH of 7 then we should be expecting something closer H1.999O. If the difference is flawed experimentation, I would expect proper scientific reserarch to explain this, just as I'd expect it to explain the reasons that even the rudimentary equalibrium analysis is wrong for the timeframe of a attosecend.
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Open Source Sysadmin
No not the article, THIS: If protons can sometimes seem invisible to electrons and neutrons, then what about also sometimes invisible to other protons? If yes, then can that "sometimes" finally explain both the positive and the negative Cold Fusion experiments?
"Well duh, it's H(OH)!"?
-insert a witty something-
What if you counted the other stuff that is disolved within the water? Especially in cities with older pipes.
We may have CH2O or FeH1.5O.
I know those of us who went to public schools know what I'm talking about.
-Xander Natas "Yes, I rather like this God fellow. He's very theatrical, you know, a pestilence here, a plague there. O
And I thought the funny taste was from the haloacetic acid.
This side up.
so an optimist would say the glass is 62.5% full?
If the interaction lasts 10^-18 s, then by special relativity the neutron couldn't interact with anything more than 0.3 nanometer away, or 3 angstrom. Any chance that the experiment is too fast to see the surroundings?
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
for PC running at 200 Yhz with 256 Zettas of memory...
And if you had read my post, you would have noticed that I was making the same point you are, specifically that the headline and blurb were totatally absurd and unrelated to the research. To recap:
- Someone did some research
- Someone else posted an article on slashdot, totally misrepresenting the research.
- I posted a comment, pointing out that the article on slashdot was an absurd misrepresentation of the research, and suggesting a better headline.
- You replied to my comment, telling me to RTFA and quoting the research but completely missing my point, that the headline and blurb on slashdot were absurd and missed the point of the research.
- I posted this clarification.
-- MarkusQI can barely hold my breath that long. I gotta quit smoking.
Sesqui is the prefix for 1.5, so...
H-Sesqu-O
Pronounced: (three syllables) h * cess * quo '
Of course, I don't believe them. (I have an MS in Organic Chemistry). Lets see them get out a Dissolved Oxygen Meter and prove that dissolved oxygen isn't affecting their results...
What this basically means is that water exists in a networkd (read hydrogen bonded) state where hydrogen and oxygen atoms are shared, so the effective formula is a bit different.
Won't affect the textbooks, don't worry!!
Yeah, like about 10-15 seconds LESS than 10-15 seconds.
An attosecond is 10^-18s. Your description, while perfectly accurate, could still be accurate if it were 19 orders of magnitude smaller. :)
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
Chemically speaking...
A molecule is something with a molecular formula, made up of a specific number of atoms (i.e., integer numbers). It also has a particular shape and its bonds are arranged in a particular way. Change one atom or one bond and you change the molecule and its properties.
A compound (like some of the zeolites and semiconductors others have mentioned) is a mix of bonded atoms that, on average have a formula that may contain fractions or decimals. Because this is an average, the compound has no distinct start or end, and if one atom is removed the average still probably holds.
Because water is a molecule (even though its ions are common), its formula will always be H2O... to a chemist.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein
The point of the letter isn't so much that your four-legged cow only has 3 legs, but that there is some interesting effect whereby it seems to have 3 legs, at least when relying on time-scales as short as attoseconds, and particles such as neutrons and electrons, as opposed to photons.
.1-.5 fs.
The original poster seems to imply the experiments were performed on a femtosecond time-scale (10^-15) as opposed to the attosecond (10^-18). The confusion may come from the fact that the article says something about probing chemical reactions on the 100-500 as scale, which is the same as
how long is planck (h:[meter]) length again?
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lightspeed (c:[meter/second])
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