Simple Facts Unknown to Most

It is responsible for more deaths than any other chemical compound in the universe. It also is responsible for the most property damage. So, when I tell people that my favorite chemical compound is dihydrogen-monoxide (a/k/a dihydrogen oxide) some think that I must be crazy. They get downright anxious when I tell them I love the stuff so much that I swim in it and spray it all over my body every morning and night. I could not live without it.

Neither could you. If you paid attention in chemistry class, you know dihydrogen-monoxide by its other name: water. Since it is so important, I do not understand why we do not know more about it.

Water is so important that in some places it is more valuable than oil. It is so powerful that it can destroy two of the other three elements of nature (earth and fire). It can completely overwhelm the composition of the fourth (air).

Since the beginning of time, scientists have been trying to figure out what makes water the only chemical compound in the universe with two unique properties. First, it expands when it cools. Every other element of matter contracts when it cools. This is important because, as I mentioned above, we cannot live without it.

If water did not expand when it cools, all of it would evaporate and Earth would look like Mars. Instead, as it rises in stream form, it cools back into liquid, then ice. Then it falls back to earth as rain, snow, sleet, and hail, keeping it on our planet.

Just as importantly is its second unique property. This is something that the vast majority of people do not know. Pure water is the hardest substance in the universe. Because we mostly see it in liquid form, we do not understand. Yet, water is the only thing known to man that does not compress.

Before you E-mail me contradictions, I will admit that when other chemicals are added some water does compress slightly under extreme pressure. At the deepest point known on earth, the bottom of the Mariana Trench, under pressure that could crush 2-foot-thick steel walls, scientists found that water compresses only an estimated 4%. That is not enough to affect anything. To keep it in perspective, driving in a rain storm typically increase the density of the air through which your vehicle travels by more than 4,000%. (The density of water is about 800 times the density of air.). The compression was because sea water contains another element: salt. (About 97% of the water on earth is saltwater.) It often also contains other chemicals. The Mariana Trench experiment, actually proved that the other chemicals in that particular water compress but the hydrogen-oxygen bond does not compress.

If water did compress, our world would be much different. Water would never permeate soil. Instead of compressing the dirt as gravity pulls it below, it would simply compress itself and lay on top of the dirt. That would make it quite difficult to get water to the roots we need for the plants upon which we depend. (When you see a sprinkler on a dirt lot just prior to construction you are witnessing the construction company using water to compress the dirt.)

We also would not have as many natural springs. Because of the underground pressure the water would simply compress into a smaller space, like oil does. The only springs would be where something caused a fissure so the compressed water would escape. Natural springs are not caused by compression. It is just the opposite. Because water does not compress, as rainwater permeates the soil it pushes the excess water out of the aquifer.

Likewise, more than 50% of our bodies are made up of water because we need it to grow upward. Trees are not heavy because of the wood. They are heavy because of the amount of water contained in the wood. If you do not believe me, go out and take a look at your vegetable garden in the middle of the afternoon one hot summer day. Notice how the plants look when water has evaporated from their leaves. Step on a piece of rotten wood, from which the water has evaporated. Have a nice trip.

All hydraulic equipment takes advantage of this fact. By holding water in a tube (sometimes a very thick tube) that prevents it from pushing outward, water can be used to deliver the same amount of force at the distant end as at the source end, regardless of its length. Nothing is lost because nothing is compressed.

Oceans would be much different if water compressed. When ships sink, they would drop only to the point that they had the same density of the compressed water. Nothing would make it to the bottom of the sea. Our seas would turn into bins full of garbage floating at every level, and the bottom would have water compressed into a solid. Because water is in liquid form it can move to allow the intrusion to fall to the ocean floor, but it does not compress.

If you have ever fallen on ice, you might think ice is the hardest substance known to man but, believe it or not, ice is less dense than water. That is why it floats. Yes, ice the substance that has moved continents and created mountains is softer than liquid water.

Interestingly, by adding salt, the actual density of the water increases but, as mentioned above, that additional element can be compressed so the denser water is actually softer. That is why the buoyancy of ships changes from freshwater to saltwater. A ship can hold more cargo in saltwater.

I always wondered if they figured this one out by somebody sailing up a river and as the water changed from salt to fresh they realized the water line was coming up to the top of their gunwale and then it was over the gunwale and the boat was filling with water.

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Now, I will dig a little deeper for the other science buffs (ok, geeks) while hoping to avoid putting everyone into a coma. This is a summary from part of a white paper I wrote to try to disprove the theory of black holes.

Black holes are areas in space described mathematically (I am leaving out the math) as having so much matter that their gravity attracts more and more matter, causing the gravity to continue to increase until there is an infinitesimally dense “hole” with such a gravitational force that even light is sucked into it. (Remember, Einstein proved that light is affected by gravity.)

Well, we know from the Gay-Lussac gas law that temperature increases when gasses are compressed. Anyone who has watched their mother cook learned very young that when one heats water, the opposite happens. It turns to gas and evaporates. (Although I knew this most of my life, I was reminded of it the other evening when I fell asleep and boiled some rigatoni for 12 hours. Yes, the water evaporated and the heat increased so much it burned the copper off the bottom of my pot.)

Anyway, if a black hole has such gravity, the pressure would increase causing the temperature to increase to the point that water would turn to gas. The gravity, however, would cause it to compress. When compressed, water would turn back into liquid, its most-dense form. As a liquid it would not compress. Therefore, it could not fit into an infinitely small space.

So, not only does water keep everything on earth from dying, it also keeps everything in the universe from reverting back into a pre-Big Bang state, prior to creation.

I am not going to go so far as to claim water proves the existence of God, but it comes dam close. (Pun intended).

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Here is one other interesting thing about water that few people don’t know. I concocted a small poll about this one. I called 20 members of my family and friends who live in different cities and asked them all the same question, “At what temperature does water boil”?

Ten people gave me the same answer, which is the generally accepted answer: 212°F. I was surprised that more people did not say the same thing since it is accepted as correct by most people. Then I made the 21st call to a professor of physics at a major university (who asked me not to use his name) who studied physics with me at FSU. He gave the only correct answer: “Where are you boiling”?

You see, water boils at 212° at sea level. It boils at lower temperatures as pressure drops. That means the higher the altitude, the lower the boiling point. In Denver water boils at about 202°. Cooking fans know this because the lower temperature requires a longer cooking time. (Please don’t consider this an invitation to move to the beach.)

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[I have spent most of the last three days reading eyewitness accounts and various intelligence reports on the number of anti-American groups that are funding the riots in our country, and planning many more. When I compared the actual truth to the crap I was seeing on television, I became so depressed that I had to write about something other than law and politics today. I need a break and then I’ll write about that topic after this weekend of nationwide violence.]

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