Australian thrips of the Haplothrips lineage (Insecta: Thysanoptera)
Water is important and ubiquitous and surprisingly not understood. Just because is it common, does not mean its understood "Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars-mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? ... What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it." - Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, 1963. (Cited in the introduction to Chapter 3 of "The Snowflake, Winter's Secret Beauty, Text by Kenneth Libbrecht, Photography by Patricia Rasmussen.) 1. Highlight the fact that water is still one of the most active and challenging research areas in chemistry and physics 2. Describe in general terms why water is unique from the point of view of its properties o Large dipole-moment o Very polarizable o Involved in is own chemistry (e.g. auto ionization defining the pH scale) • Atomic view: o Oxygen and Hydrogen. o Hydrogen is a quantum mechanical in nature. Classical physics is no good. o Water’s Charge-charge interaction described by classical physics laws (e.g. Coulomb) o The statistical mechanics of water. Why counting is important. o You need the full arsenal of theoretical methods to understand water • Waters well known bulk properties do not explain waters anomalies o Surface tension, heat capacity • Understanding the microscopic nature of water and how this gives rise to the known bulk quantities is the thrust of state-of-the-art research o Hydrogen bonding o Liquid structure o The so-called “spherical cow” model gets you no where with water o There are 10s-100s of different water models available in the scientific literature. It is a hard business • All of life takes place at the interfaces of solid, liquid, and gas o Biology takes advantage of waters varying properties in different geometries (e.g. confined, surfaces, etc. o Water behaves differently in confined environments • Water is the most abundant greenhouse gas o How does a microscopic understanding of water impact our knowledge of the radiation budget of the earth o How does a microscopic understanding of water impact our knowledge of weather.
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 935067
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL-SA-55869; KC0301020; TRN: US200815%%107
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Natural History, Vol. 41, Issue 45-48; ISSN 0022-2933
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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