Order and Disorder in Liquid Water: Investigating the Structure of H2O Molecules

AI Thread Summary
Liquid water does not exhibit a crystalline structure at room temperature, as it is primarily composed of closely packed, disordered H2O molecules. The discussion revolves around the existence and size of ordered domains within the hydrogen-bonded network, questioning whether these domains maintain translational symmetry. Temperature appears to influence the size of these domains, with speculation that lower temperatures might lead to more order. The presence of voids or vacancies in liquid water is not typically deterministic, suggesting a need for clearer definitions of "order." Overall, while some representations of water may appear realistic, they often do not accurately depict the state of water at room temperature.
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Does liquid water have ordered structure?
I.e., are there significant domains of ordered H2O molecules that maintain crystallinity - translational symmetry - in liquid water at room temperature?
I guess this is essentially a hydrogen bonded network -
How big are these domains? Or are they mostly disordered, closely packed molecules without short-range or medium-range order? Is there a temperature dependence to domain size?

What determines if there are voids or vacancies or free molecules?
 
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Define "order" - how would you tell if it was present or not?
Liquid water is not normally modeled, at room temp, to have any crystalline structure at all.
The presence or otherwise of voids, vacancies, or free molecules is not normally deterministic ... but I suspect the terms you are using could use tightening: what is the context?

Something like this:
http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2013/cp/c3cp52271g#!divAbstract
 
The reason I ask is I found this diagram in a textbook and find it very curious -
Is this a realistic representation of water?

WaterStructure_Christian_Reichardt.jpg


The textbook is "Solvents and Solvent Effects in Organic Chemistry" by Christian Reichardt
The cited reference [9] is [9] R. A. Horne: The Structure of Water and Aqueous Solutions, in A. F. Scott (ed.): Survey of Progress in Chemistry 4, 1 (1968).
But I couldn't find a copy of this reference.

Thanks for your help/opinion
 
Define "realistic" :smile:

In some ways it is realistic, in some ways it is not.
 
I would guess this is not room temp. water. This looks like what I imagine freezing/thawing water to look like.
 
Definitely it must be a matter of temperature.
 
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