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Water Suddenly Becomes Mysterious
An anonymous reader writes "Logical to assume that scientists know the structure of water. But wrong. A study in April by Anders Nilsson from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center concluded the molecular bonds are looser than thought. Now a new study by Richard Saykally's group at UC Berkeley appears to debunk the April results. So a new debate is born. Both scientists agree on one thing: They don't fully understand how water molecules interact."
"Logical to assume" I guess we know why the reader stayed anonymous.
Considering that even fluid dynamics has a hard time making water behave in a way that looks realistic, why is this surprising?
Some of the programmers I work with don't understand that water (when used with soap) can help remove that small that follows them around. I wonder if some of these scientists have the same problem.
Let's go Hurricanes!!! 2006 Stanley Cup Champions!!!
I bet YOU have used water and soap to remove your 'small' because it wasn't worth anything to begin with.
Somebody much of swapped the "control" test with Vodka......
"NIPPLES!! I HAVE NO NIPPLES!!!" -Happy Noodle Boy
Water is wet... doesn't take a scientist to figure that out.
The small what?
My cup of tea has suddenlly run off for the weekend with its,..er...well... "friend" and an overnight bag filled with minature chocolate bars, muttering something about Cuba and the mob. Gawd I hope I have the bail money.
among common substances, water is perhaps the weirdest. Here is why:
-the solid is less dense than the liquid (ice floats). This is key for life, as otherwise lakes would freeze from the bottom up and freeze solid. The ice that forms on top now acts as an insulator.
-there are 12 known varieties of ice, depending on pressure and temperature conditiions. Not all of them have a hexagonal crystal strucuture.
-for it's size, water boils at a very high temperature. This is due to the organization of the liquid into hexagonal rings of 6 molecules, preventing any from evaporating.
-it's one of the few common substances that we see in all 3 phases. (i.e. you don't see solid vodka around, nor gaseous iron, etc)
-it's the best known solvent in existance (i.e. it dissolves the most stuff).
The list goes on and on. Water is actually fairly miraculous.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
That would be smell, not small. Oops.
Let's go Hurricanes!!! 2006 Stanley Cup Champions!!!
From my background, I can mention that the infrared absorptions of the two OH bonds are at a wavenumber of 3650 and 3750 cm-1 (around 2.7 micrometers wavelength). In liquid water, these absorptions shift to a band around 3400 cm-1 (2.95 micron). It is a widely accepted fact that this shift of the OH vibration frequency occurs as a result of the hydrogen bond forming between the H of the OH and the O of the next water molecule:
There is hardly any absorption in liquid water at 3650 and 3750 cm-1, which would strongly suggest that nearly all water molecules have both of their hydrogen atoms bonded to other water molecules (that means four H-bonds per molecule). If the claim in the article were true, half of the OH groups would be free and absorb at a higher wavenumber.The idea that the OH absorption wavelength depends on whether it has a hydrogen bond is in agreement with a large number of studies in which for example clusters of two, three, four water molecules embedded in another material or in vacuum have different infrared absorptions. They are also in agreement with calculations on what happens with an OH bond when you let it form a hydrogen bond, and with fully quantum-mechanical so-called ab initio calculations of how water molecules should behave, although with the latter, one might object that computers still are not powerful enough to do these calculations with more than a couple of ten molecules at a time.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
Was the study published 1st April?
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Too late. Yankee Oscar Uniform, Foxtrot Alpha India Lima, India Tango. UNCONDITIONALLY!
So, when one group tested, their beaker was half-full, and when the other tested, it was half-empty...
NEWS FLASH: Anders Nilsson from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center presented evidence that chili is more loosely bound than previously thought when consumed at room temperature...
Nice photos of water patterns from a guy aptly named Alexander Lauterwasser ("clear water" in German). He produces them by setting shallow water tablets into vibration, mostly through sound. Nice pics
Nothing like a typo to bring out the asshats. Thanks for your input.
Let's go Hurricanes!!! 2006 Stanley Cup Champions!!!
I think most people don't realize that even before these results we didn't have a good grasp of water. This controversy dumps a whole load of new fuel into the large fire. The following issues are more simulation and protein related, but maybe they give brief insight into how much we don't know:
:)
None of the (molecular dynamics, "MD") computer models of water are currently sufficient to reproduce all of the experimentally observered properties of water. This is a relatively big point of contention when simulating proteins as water needs to be accounted for. There are experimentalists that chide the theorists, even saying that they won't fully believe MD results until a decent model of water has been built.
We also don't quite know what the first hydration shell around a protein looks like. Imagine this is being the closest "coat" of water around a protein. This ordering of water could be a key component to understanding the properties/behavior of protein surfaces in binding to other molecules.
In addition, water mediated interactions between proteins is almost a completely open question. As far as I know, we don't really know how to approach the problem in an elegant manner and there have been no studies that reasonably address this at a detailed molecular level (partially due to the above two issues) even in a heuristic sense.
There is a huge literature on water. A good deal of work has been done on the above three issues and other big open issues with water that I won't go into depth on. Needless to say water has been and will continue to be a mystery for quite a while.
...and if there isn't some consideration taken for the work of Masaru Emoto then any study is liable to be missing a few hints. He's suggesting that consciousness has a measure effect upon water. In most of the science world, that's Weird Shit, as we can only relate such phenomena to quantum mechanics.
.
-shpoffo
Hear, hear! Molecular dynamics of large molecules like proteins is complete voodoo, but the emperor isn't listening, nobody wants to believe this. Given the difficulty modeling water any attempt to model a protein (likely surrounded by water) is like trying to fly a jet before you can crawl. I spent a couple of years working with computational chemists. It was astonishing how many tweakable parameters simulations had. There is only one set of laws of physics - there should be nothing to tweak. But computational 'chemists' would tweak and tweak all day. And after the x-ray crystallography results came in they'd say "see, the modeling worked, on the 23rd of last month the sim I ran at 3pm used these parameters and they came out just like these results." The whole area is a joke.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
There's a vinter named Elements (no web site, sorry) in the Hunter Valley region of south-eastern Australia. They do a Chardonnay, Shiraz and a few other specialties.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
-it's the best known solvent in existance (i.e. it dissolves the most stuff).
This reminds me that it is used in homeopathy. The problem is that it seems the active substance is diluted so much that there is probably not a single molecule of it left in the water. Yet, it works. As far as I know, scientists don't have a clue about how it can work, and many tend to doubt it does. Competent homeopats may have theories about how it works, but these theories never seemed to make much sense to me (they actually sound to my layman's ears as just some mystical crap).
How can seemingly plain water sometimes be so incredibly effective as a medicine? Nobody seems to know, but as a father, I was just amazed at the effects. (And please, don't mention "placebo"; that can work too sometimes, but then why don't antibiotics have the same placebo effect? And does the placebo effect work on small children?)
So for me, there certainly is room for new discoveries about water (and matter in general).
If I could mod you up, I would mod you.
But I can't. So I won't.
Funny is an AC with knowledge of phonetic alphabets.
concluded the molecular bonds are looser than thought.
Try "previously thought," for example.
Christ, why do we contine to pay these so-called editors?
Oh, wait...
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
I don't know if there's anything to it or not. He may be a quack but then again maybe not. I read somewhere that Nature was about to publish or perhaps did publish his work on water memory and some scientists got all riled up. Allegedly they sent the editor of Nature and James Randi to debunk him.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
"we didn't have a good grasp of water" you said.
Ever tried nailing water to a tree?
Your arguments don't hold water. And I'm not getting myself wet by making another counterargument easily liquidated. It's not like drowning in non-solid arguments is going to flow anywhere.
By the way. Shouldn't the huge litterature "on water" be "underwater"? Some books don't float you know.
MOD me desinformative. (-;
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
Memory of Water
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
I've previously noted the phenomenon of comments with similar subjects appearing together chronologically.
Now we have two comments, both entitled "I'm skeptic", written by different people.
I'm beginning to think that Slashdot is a huge AI system and I'm the only real person here. I'm also of the opinion that the "A" is far more significant than the "I", especially if the AI code is anything like the "HTML" that Slashcode produces...
Ydco co