It is crucial, indispensable, the source of Our life.
Water represents the beginning of life, it gave the onset of the first living
organisms on Earth. Its frozen outcome – ice – still hosts microbe forms of live
the scientists examine, or, discover new forms of. Water became a quite
expensive commodity, people fight wars to monopolize it, control it, trade with
it. Can we truly do without water? – No, in my humble opinion. Water covers 75%
of our planet, it is the simplest chemical compound we know and studied, which,
made it so exceptional molecule. It is so common we get used to it, it is all
around us, all the time, therefore, we treat it as something normal, out of ordinary. Its uniqueness lays in the fact that it dissolves other
liquids quickly, and, it is frequently used to dissolve substances. Its
chemical formula H₂O is known worldwide, not everyone knows, yet, that water can produce fifteen different types of ice. The
first scientist who was intrigued by water was Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier. He experimented with water and in 18th
century he came up with the astonishing discovery that water consisted of two
compounds: hydrogen and oxygen. He was a precursor of so-called ‘chemical
revolution’ which came alongside with the French Revolution.
While
Lavoisier is commonly known for his contributions to the sciences, he also
dedicated a significant portion of his fortune and work toward benefiting the
public. Lavoisier was a humanitarian – he cared deeply about the people in his
country and often concerned himself with improving the livelihood of the
population by agriculture, industry, and the sciences. In 1768, he focused on a
new project to design an aqueduct. The goal was to bring in water from the
river Yvette into Paris Seine . This was the project
that interested Lavoisier in the chemistry of water and public sanitation
duties. It was very difficult to secure public funding for the sciences at the
time, and additionally not very financially profitable for the average
scientist, so Lavoisier used his wealth to open a very expensive and
sophisticated laboratory in France 1774 in
a book entitled Opuscules physiques et chimiques (Physical and
Chemical Essays). In the course of this review he made his first full study of
the work of Joseph Black, the Scottish chemist who had carried out a
series of classic quantitative experiments on the mild and caustic alkalies.
Black had shown that the difference between a mild alkali, for
example, chalk (CaCO3), and the caustic form, for
example, quicklime (CaO), lay in the fact that the former contained
"fixed air," not common air fixed in the chalk, but a distinct
chemical species, now understood to be carbon dioxide (CO2),
which was a constituent of the atmosphere. Lavoisier recognized that Black's
fixed air was identical with the air evolved when metal calces were reduced
with the charcoal and even suggested that the air which combined with metals on
calcination and increased the weight might be Black's fixed air, that is, CO2.
In 1700s and 1900s people recognized water as a very
simple and common element, they didn’t know anything about hydrogen or oxygen.
They didn’t know much about atoms and molecules. Yet, there were some, who looked
for answers, John Dalton, for instance, gave the beginning of ‘the chemical
atomic theory’. It was him who described the water’s formula as H₂O. The water in the bottle in
our fridge is not the same as its solids such as ice – they are not typical.
However both store and produce an incredibly huge amount of energy. We can heat
it up or cool it down. As we like it. When we cool the water down about of 4
degrees, it does something unusual, it expends. Its density reduces. Moreover,
it floats on its melts. No other material does it, no other material behaves in the similar way. Water when freezes, contracts. Another unique thing is it boils
in 100 degrees. The proximity of the Sun is relatively close to the Earth, the fact
that we have water on earth is exceptional, the Sun plays a significant
factor of having it and keeping it for billions of years. The light was split on
the water in the hydrogen and oxygen – bear in mind it happened on the planet
without an atmosphere. Through the combination of luck and life – we have an
atmosphere with various sets of molecules which are able to filter out the most
harmful of rays and protect water from being destroyed. It was a time people
loved experimenting, so they did with electricity. They
passed electric currents through different materials. The English man called William
Nicholson passed the electricity through the sample of slightly acid water and
he observed that he got two different gases, hydrogen and oxygen, by measuring
the volume of that he found that they are two to one ratio: two parts hydrogen
and one part oxygen. He wanted to measure it by its weight. Remember, people at
that time used to weight things; they measured its value by its actual weight.
Therefore he wanted to know how much oxygen and hydrogen weight. The mystery
was solved by Alexander Williamson – he was able to distinguish (that water a
parent of all class of molecules such as alcohols (ROH) or ethers (ROR)) the formation
of unsymmetrical ethers by the interaction of an alcoxide with haloalkane, known as the
Williamson ether synthesis. He regarded ether and alcohol as substances
analogous to and built up on the same type as water, and he further introduced
the water-type as a widely applicable basis for the classification of chemical
compounds. The method of stating the rational constitution of bodies by
comparison with water he believed capable of wide extension, and that one type,
he thought, would suffice for all inorganic compounds, as well as for the
best-known organic ones, the formula of water being taken in certain cases as
doubled or tripled. He also suggested a view which, in a modified form,
is of fundamental importance in the modern theory of ionic dissociation, for, in a paper on the theory
of the formation of ether, he urged that in an aggregate of molecules of any compound there is an
exchange constantly going on between the elements which are contained in it;
for instance, in hydrochloric
acid each atom of hydrogen does not remain quietly in
juxtaposition with the atom of chlorine with which it first united,
but changes places with other atoms of hydrogen.
Water boils in such hot
temperature because it has got the hydrogen bonds holding it in place. It is a
liquid which is also very sticky. It is sticky towards all other materials. For
example, you touch a table, yet, it is not your finger that does it, your
finger touches water molecules that does it. Water is a very good solvent, due
to polarity of water which helps to break down other substances. Ice is an intriguing outcome of water – its solid.
When water freezes more hydrogen bonds are formed between water
molecules. It turns into a crystal. When all the hydrogen bonds you can form
have formed – the hexagonal structures appear – such forms are manifested in
snowflakes. Through a thickness of 10 meters or more, the intrinsic color of
water (or ice) is visibly turquoise (greenish blue), as
its absorption spectrum has a sharp minimum at the corresponding
color of light (1/227 m−1 at 418 nm). The color becomes
increasingly stronger and darker with increasing thickness. (Practically no
sunlight reaches the parts of the oceans below 1000 meters of depth.)
Infrared and ultraviolet light, on the other hand, is
strongly absorbed by water. Because of its polarity, a molecule of water in the
liquid or solid state can form up to four hydrogen bonds with
neighboring molecules. These bonds are the cause of water's high surface
tension and capillary forces.
The capillary action refers to the tendency of water to move up a
narrow tube against the force of gravity. This property is relied upon by
all vascular plants, such as trees. The hydrogen bonds are also the reason
why the melting and boiling points of water are much higher than those
of other analogous compounds like hydrogen sulfide (H2S). They also explain its exceptionally
high specific heat capacity (about 4.2 J/g/K), heat of
fusion (about 333 J/g), heat of vaporization (2257 J/g), and thermal conductivity (between
0.561 and 0.679 W/m/K).
All these properties make water more effective at moderating Earth's climate, by storing heat and transporting it between the oceans and the atmosphere. Furthermore, at the end of the day, we come home and the first thing we do is to have a glass of water, a miraculous and profound liquid which is crucial for our survival. Now we know what it is and how badly we all depend on it.
All these properties make water more effective at moderating Earth's climate, by storing heat and transporting it between the oceans and the atmosphere. Furthermore, at the end of the day, we come home and the first thing we do is to have a glass of water, a miraculous and profound liquid which is crucial for our survival. Now we know what it is and how badly we all depend on it.
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