Interesting article about water

[wolram]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090811143716.htm

Water is familiar to everyone—it shapes our bodies and our planet. But despite this abundance, the molecular structure of water has remained a mystery, with the substance exhibiting many strange properties that are still poorly understood. Recent work at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and several universities in Sweden and Japan, however, is shedding new light on water’s molecular idiosyncrasies, offering insight into its strange bulk properties.

 

[jpreed]

Very cool. I remember recently sitting in on a colloquium where the speaker showed how water will "cage" small molecules within hydrogen bonded structures on a femtosecond time scale.

 

[f95toli]

Phillip Ball has written an excellent book, "H20" which among other things deals with many of the strange properties of water.
Highly recommended!

 

[Bystander]

Robinson & Stokes, Electrolyte Solutions, Ch. 1 for 60-70 year old X-ray distributions of 1st & 2nd nearest neighbors in liquid water, discussion of populations of "structured" and "unstructured" clusters. Felix Franks, Stillinger, Ben Naim, for 60s and 70s pictures of structure.

This would make a good research project for History of Science: "How frequently do people rediscover the properties of water and structured/unstructured population distribution hypotheses to explain those properties?"