Funny Water

Funny water

Water is peculiar stuff. Because it is all around us in its 3 forms of water, steam and ice we tend to take it for granted. It is strange in that by usual chemistry it would be a gas but its weak interactions between its molecules means it is a liquid under normal conditions. Water shrinks on melting where most substances expand. This means that lakes and ponds freeze from the top down rather than from the bottom up which preserves life. Water is a very good solvent which means it is ubiquitous in life. There are other oddities such as hot water freezing faster than cold water known as the Mpemba effect.

While I was working for Unilever there was a Faraday society meeting on surface properties at Cambridge University. These are high powered very academic meetings which normally I would never attend. However the head of the Research Laboratory was secretary to the Faraday Group and wanted a good attendance. So the word went out and along with other colleagues I went. The papers presented were fascinating at the forefront of the field and represented some very elegant and painstaking work.

Among the foreign scientists present was  an eminent man from Bulgaria. Our head invited him to Port Sunlight laboratories to continue his work. He had become famous at that time for discovering what was thought to be a new form of water where the individual molecules were believed to form a chain like a polymer. In fact the new form was christened polywater.

There was a scare story in the press suggesting that that the new form could act as a catalyst turning surrounding water into polywater. So research on the topic at Port Sunlight was immediately controversial. The controversy didn’t last for very long because it was discovered that the polywater was a mistake. Water very, very slightly dissolved the glass container and it was this trace of dissolved glass which misled the researchers.

The meeting was memorable for other reasons. One of my colleagues had been a doctoral student at Cambridge. He eagerly showed us around including taking us out on a punt on River Cam. He was excited to find what was, he thought, an easy way to climb into the college at night when normally the entrance would be closed.

After our first night ( we were staying in student accommodation) I was surprised to find on rising a trail of blood leading to his room. Looking to find what the problem was I found him lying in pain on his bed. He explained he had climbed in but seeking to gain just a bit  more height over a massive gate he stood on the spikes and attempted to hoist himself up. Wearing soft soled shoes the spikes had penetrated his feet.

With another colleague we rushed him to hospital and returned to the conference. The climbing in after hours was totally unnecessary as the main entrance never closed. I did drive him back to the Wirral after the conference but he was in disgrace. In fact this wasn’t his only transgression and he was fired shortly afterwards

I’ve recently been reading about some work which suggests water may in fact exist in 2 forms, one highly ordered and one not. The evidence is controversial but may lead to an explanation for the strange behaviour of water.

Todays smile.. She was only a photographers daughter but she was really well developed

( Not sure this is politically correct nowadays