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."

Comments

Question.

[sporty]

Isn't H1.5O illegal nomenclature? Shouldn't it be 2H30? Mabe cp30?

Re:Question.

[Malcolm Scott]

Or perhaps you mean H3O2. But anyway, it's all quantum, so we may well be talking about half-atoms floating round.....

Re:Question.

[Lady Jazzica]

Mabe cp30?

It can't be that, since water doesn't contain phosphorus.

C3PO:


C

|

C = C - P = O

Re:Question.

[fm6]

To a chemist, maybe. To a physicist there's nothing abusrd about saying "half an oxygen atom" or "50% chance of interacting with an oxygen atom".

Well, I exaggerate. But you got to admit that modern physics is really weird.

Re:Question.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are lots of compounds where they have to express them as fractions, mainly because the exact structure is more of a solid-solution-substitution rather than a hard and fast ratio (pyrrhotite is one, "Fe1-xS"). That's more something you see in Geology rather than chemistry though, since nature is a lot more disordered than chemists in labs.

Re:Question.

[twiztidlojik]

Actually, the hydrinuim ion, or H3O+, is an H3O. Technically, 2H3O+ would mean two hydronium ions.

Re:Question.

[Sgt York]

2H3O? H3O2? H6O3.1416?

That's what you get when two fields collide like this. H2O is a stoichiometric formula, it's not supposed to represent the actual molecule at all times. If the ratio for water was actually 3:2 instead of 2:1, fuel cells (like on US space missions) would wind up with an excess of hydrogen after reaction. That has not been observed. Also, if you electrolyze water, you get a 2:1 molar ratio of H to O. Not a 3:2 ratio.

If yu take pure water, you will not find a homogeneous mixture of molecules consisting of 1 oxygen bound to 2 hydrogens. You will find mostly that, plus OH, H3O, and free protons (H+). Th stoichiometry, however, still works out. There are 2 hydrogens for every oxygen.

Re:Question.

[Dahan]

It's not illegal per se... see the definition of non-stoichiometric. One of the first high-temperature superconductors has the formula YBa2Cu3O7-d (d should be a lowercase delta), where d is a small number, so you end up with something like YBa2Cu3O6.95 or YBa2CU3O6.7. However, In this particular case, I think saying that water is like H1.5O is incorrect, or at least misleading.

Re:Question.

[jx100]

CCCP=0? hmm... I guess the Soviet Union did fall...

Still water!

[trompete]

Well, as long as it's still wet, there's no reason to panic.

Re:H2O, H3O, and OH

[otuz]

The big deal is you'd end up with a glass 125% full of water.

You're not tasting water

[BoomerSooner]

You're tasting the chemicals added to it. Mmmmm.... chemicals.

Can you say WRONG

[MarkusQ]

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

Re:Can you say WRONG

[Smidge204]

Maybe they used an old Pentium processor...

=Smidge=

Re:Can you say WRONG

[damien_kane]

Maybe they used an old Pentium processor...

So that's how they got the extra hydrogen in there...
Add a little hydrofluoric acid and poof!!!

2 HF + 2 H2O + 2 O2 => 2 H3O2 + 2 FOOF

Re:Can you say WRONG

[OwnerOfWhinyCat]

Must agree Markus. The cow leg counter is a great example.

The absurdity in the article makes one wonder where we've been getting all that hydrogen from for all these years. We've been cracking H2O with electrolysis and been getting both H's pretty consistently for decades. The experiments that show the PH are pretty solid as well, so it seems a little early to start theorizing that black holes are giving off the extra half a mole of Hydrogen we've been getting out of a mole of water.

The cool part (that they seemed to entirely miss) is that these techniques could be used to confirm/reject models for wave-theory covalent bonding. Maybe that tough little benzene ring is resonant at more than just the electron shell level....

Re:Can you say WRONG

[OG]

Your interpretation of the article is absurd (if you even read it). The H1.5O thing was a hook to get you to read it. No one seriously suggested that water only had 1.5 hydrogen atoms.

From the article: "Apparently, the protons in hydrogen were sometimes "invisible" to the neutron probes. While the exact details are still being debated by theorists, the researchers' own theoretical considerations suggest the presence of short-lived (sub-femtosecond) entanglement, in which protons in adjacent hydrogen atoms (and possibly the surrounding electrons) are all interlinked in such a way as to change the nature of the scattering results."

As for the "machine not working" argument--again, read the article. It was demonstrated using two different methods and three research teams.

It's a scam

[Frac]

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!

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. ;-P

Scientist to struggling chemistry students...

[quandrum]

Just kidding!

Their results are suspect

[karmavore]

Clearly their test samples were contaminated with dihydrogenmonoxide.

No single instant of time

[SpaceLifeForm]

That should be 10^-15 seconds, not 10-15 seconds.

Re:No single instant of time

[fehlschlag]

Article:...for only attoseconds (less than 10-15 seconds)...
and
Post: That should be 10^-15 seconds, not 10-15 seconds.

Nonetheless, an attosecond is still less than 10 to 15 seconds, as correctly stated in the article.

Lol.

Re:No single instant of time

[Garridan]

No, I think they meant 10-15 seconds. That can be simplified to -5 seconds. Of course they got such improbable results! They were using a negative value for time!

Lower interaction rate, not fewer atoms.

[Christopher Thomas]

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.

Re:water in time

[Creepy Crawler]

And if it was H2O.99999973 , we'd know what CPU they used to count it with....

H-2-WHOA!!

[quinkin]

But that will mess-up up the name of the waterslide in the Simpsons...

H-2-WHOA!

Q.

Re: H2O, H3O, and OH

[Black Parrot]

> The big deal is you'd end up with a glass 125% full of water.

It keeps you from getting bogged down in the half-empty/half-full debate.

Change water all you want

[1nv4d3r]

H-2-0, H-3-0, H-1.5-0 I don't care.

But consider yourselves warned: Leave my caffeine molecule alone!

Re:Change water all you want

[Garridan]

...or he'll fall asleep and stop posting inane comments about his caffiene addiction.

Speaking of, I think I need some more espresso. I hope the hydrogen in the water I'm about to boil hasn't read this article... or 1/4 of the hydrogen atoms might suddenly dissasociate from the water and explode!

Be careful

[isn't my name]

See this lengthy thread from years ago.

By my references...

[chriso11]

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.

Re:By my references...

[jgoemat]

I agree it is a little misleeding how they say it, but they do say in the 100-500 attosecond range, which is less than 10e-15 (0.1 to 0.5 * 10e-15) and close enough to say "less than 10e-15" and get the point across...

Re:By my references...

[ggwood]

Here is the list of "some" prefixes from Serway & Jewitt (Principles of Physics 3rd Ed.)

Power Prefix Abbreviation
-24 yocto y
-21 zepto z
-18 atto a
-15 femto f
-12 pico p
-9 nano n
-6 micro \mu (greek lower case m)
-3 milli m
-2 centi c
-1 deci d
1 deca D
2 hecto h
3 kilo k
6 mega M
9 giga G
12 tera T
15 peta P
18 exa E
21 zetta Z
24 yotta Y

Handy when you are working on things of these sizes, but both extremes are rarely used (at least by physicists I know) so saying you measured a planet with 1000 yotta grams of mass (about the size of Jupiter) will almost assuredly lead to the question: "wait, yotta...that what exponent?"

Oh, when using a magic lamp do NOT wish for one peta kitty if all you want is to pet a kitty.

Re:H2O, H3O, and OH

[jonadab]

> The big deal is you'd end up with a glass 125% full of water.

Ah, but if you take a couple of sips, then you'll have a glass that
is three-quarters full and three-quarters empty. Get another glass
just like it, drink yet a few _more_ sips out of it, until it's
one-quarter full and one-quarter empty, pour them together, and the
glass will be full and not full. You know, the full glass that
cannot be empty is not the true full glass, and all that zen rot.

this is really stupid

[chadamir]

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

Re:this is really stupid

[X-rated Ouroboros]

What's the boiling point of one molecule of water?

if not for the hydrogen bonds between adjacent H2O molecules, water would have a much lower boiling point than is observed. A single molecule of H2O would have no hydrogen bonding. Perhaps it's boiling point would be in line with the rest of the H2_ series (The BP of H2S is about -60C, for example). Thus, because it does not have all the physical properties, an H2O molecule is not the same as a water molecule. In fact, we don't get the behaviour of water until we take into account what comes into play when multiple H2O molecules collide. And that's just totally ignoring the whole issue about observers interacting with the systems they observe.

BUT, experimentally determining the boiling point of a single molecules of H2O (heating a fluorocarbon emulsion?) and determining that the boiling point of one molecule of H2O is -83C doesn't change the bulk properties of the water we all know and love. Likewise, determining under very specific experiental conditions that water gives the appearance of being H1.5O is just as uninteresting.

Oh, and for all the people scoffing at the image of half a proton... What, exactly, does a whole proton look like? Perhaps this will help give you some ideas.

Wish there was more detail on the experiment

[jgoemat]

This does not mean that water molecules have one and a half hydrogen atoms at all. If you use electrolysis to separate the hydrogen and oxygen from a quantity of water, you will get VERY close to twice the number of oxygen atoms as hydrogen. If they gave a little more detail on their experiments it would be helpful to judge what they actually mean.

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.

Re:More than elementary chemistry

[MarkusQ]

Meaning that if the water has a pH of 7 then we should be expecting something closer H1.999O.

No, we should expect to find a mix of H2O, H, and OH. In any macroscopic volume the ratio between H & O should be 2, not 1.999 or even 1.9999999. The pH shouldn't even enter into it (if the H+'s collectively wandered a macroscopic distance from the OH-'s, water would be incredibly dangerous).

Remember, they were looking at the H's & O's via p + n & p + e scattering.

-- MarkusQ

Too fast?

[Mark of THE CITY]

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?

RTFA

[Mt._Honkey]

If you would have RTFA before posting, you would know that they aren't saying that at all.

While the exact details are still being debated by theorists, the researchers' own theoretical considerations suggest the presence of short-lived (sub-femtosecond) entanglement, in which protons in adjacent hydrogen atoms (and possibly the surrounding electrons) are all interlinked in such a way as to change the nature of the scattering results. Realizing that water itself has anomalous properties, the researchers repeated the neutron experiments in other more typical molecules, for instance in benzene (conventionally noted as C6H6). In that case, they found that the neutrons saw a ratio of hydrogen to carbon of 4.5 to 6! Meanwhile, this effect was also confirmed in various hydrogen-containing metals, in a collaboration with Uppsala University in Sweden.

They are saying that maybe at attosecond time scales, maybe the adjacent hydrogen nuclei are entangled in such a way that fewer of them interact with the incoming particle, or something to that effect. To fully understand this probably requires a deeper knowlege of quantum mechanics and more detail than this article provides, but it is not without precident for many particles to behave as one. Check out Bose-Einstein condensates for info on that.

Re:water in time

[macemoneta]

> And if it was H2O.99999973 , we'd know what CPU they used to count it with....

This was a funny, but it's also very true. People forget that the instrumentation used is also subject to error. I once spent a day hunting down a network problem, only to realize that the test equipment was creating the error, not the equipment under test. All the same model equipment from that manufacturer had the flaw, which we proved with test equipment from two other manufacturers.