On the Nature of Water, ii
Atomic Level Order
The nature of water is a case study in like dissolves
like. Water molecules have an affinity for other water molecules.
There is such a thing as pure water – it comes in the form called
distilled water. This is plain water, pure and simple – consisting
of nothing but water and water. The distillation process involves
changing the form of water from a liquid to a vapor and then removing
the vapor phase into a separate glass container. The impurities are
left behind. This water is so clean that it does not conduct
electricity – the conductivity of distilled water is nearly zero.
This would not be very good drinking water. The idea
that there are no ions dissolved in the water clears the decks of
minerals – the healthy things that our bodies use as catalysts in
their biological systems. The idea of reasonably inert cations and
anions swimming in your drinking water is not likely to be an
exciting thought – but the quantities are limited and serve to
resupply your existing system – water flushing is a major
requirement for open living systems.
Water atoms align with each other whenever they are in
solution. The degree of alignment is very temperature dependent, as
the water slowly approaches the freezing state called ice – the
atoms of water come into alignment, either in great bulk as sheets of
ice, or in smaller form like snowflakes. Dr. Emoto's work
demonstrating the beauty of photographed crystals at peace is a work
of art within nature. Water appears to sense vibration at a level
that generates novel nucleation – crystal form grows emergent from
crystal form. But what is really happening at the micro-scale level
of crystalline chemistry?
Water like to share the hydrogen atoms it owns with
other water atoms. In a gathering of water, the oxygen atom is
surrounded by four hydrogen atoms in a tetrahedral array. In a
liquid – there is free movement and exchange and the individual
atom always retains its own two home hydrogen atoms, and constantly
has different visitors in the other two positions. Each adjacent
hydrogen that is not self, brings an oxygen atom from the water atom
that is self to another adjacent water molecule. To refresh –
elements are pure substances that exist as atoms. Atoms combine into
compounds in small whole number ratios. A molecule is a collection
of bound together atoms that has a stable recurrent form. Iron is an
element, rust is an iron compound, hemoglobin has iron atoms as part
of a complex organic molecule.
What does organic mean? Despite what your grocers
might suggest – all their produce is organic by the strict chemical
definition. Organic chemistry involves combinations of the four
elements hydrogen H, oxygen O, nitrogen N and carbon C, supplemented
by sulfur S and phosphorus P. The carbon structures provide several
backbone chains that have becomes keys to explaining all biochemical
life – known as proteins, enzymes, fats and lipids, carbohydrates,
nucleic acids and many other forms. The jump between biochemistry
and chemistry is mitigated by the presence of water as a form unto
itself – we can liken it to the air that we breathe on a human
scale. Everything small and living is all-contained by water.
Water is a solvent that aligns by nature of its polar
character to form a hydration sphere around every different
solubilized ion. Ionic compounds are solids that can generally be
dissolved in water – the cations separate from the anions and each
are surrounded by water molecules. The cations have a positive
charge and attract the negative oxygen end of the water molecules,
the anions have a negative charge (extra electrons) and attract the
positive hydrogen end of the water molecule.
The size and charge of the cations and anions determine
how many water molecules appear in the cluster of waters that each
ion carries as a hydration sphere. This serves in a buffering
capacity – allowing ions to move freely about until the loss of
water causes an attraction between the ion pairs. If done slow
enough, one can grow crystals of a pure salt, simply by evaporating
water to form a super-saturated solution and allowing it to cool
about a center of nucleation.
Water
is included in the crystal lattice in many cases – the chemical
forms of these salts (ion pairs of balanced charge) are sold as
hydrates. Chemicals that can pick up water from the air are called
hygroscopic and should be stored in a dessicator. This is a closed
system where a more hygroscopic molecule like P2O5
is allowed to take water slowly away from the other chemical –
rendering it dry. Drierite is a commercial clay compound that serves
the same function or those little packages of silica beads packed
with electronics. Using dry chemicals in chemistry is very
important, as the water can be involved in less than desired
chemistry of organic syntheses. Water tends to get in the way – so
drying is an important step of many chemical processes.
If you know where the water molecules are, you can
figure out their role in what they are doing. Water is an essential
ingredient in cooking – whether it be hydrating dried beans or the
solvent for soups. Drinking water is different than drinking
beverages containing water. I attempt to drink two glasses of water
each day, in addition to the many cups of coffee and tea that are the
functional drivers of my between-meal system. Seeing that the
plumbing is working is a function of growing old – we can assume
responsibility for our own medical status by tracking the flow of
water through our systems – noticing color changes in urine as a
function of concentration – the light color, the more flushing of
the system. Vitamins and minerals tend to be water soluble and get
conveyed to the organs where they are metabolized and restocked
during the sleeping process, so to speak.
Thus ends the second lesson on he nature of water.
Please feel free to ask questions about the concepts that may seem
foreign – this is written as a primer for new students as well as
old hands and should remain entertaining on several different levels.
By dealing with the concepts of everything is a solvent with some
water content, we can begin to create a think framework as a basis of
thought – we are large sacks of water and the water itself creates
the seeds of consciousness. All water is created equal, but the
memory of water demonstrates that water in use has vastly different
properties than water in bulk. I hope to investigate this thought
next time.
Namaste' doc 040913
On the Nature of Water, iii
Measurement in Water
First – a word from our sponsors. The Oregon Natural
Resources Research Group is working diligently to form a new
conception of everyday life, with the application of the scientific
method of questioning everything we know, without assumption. ONRRI
will work in tandem with the Organization for the Advancement of
Knowledge to provide direct support to communities that are growing
food on a local scale – in order to ease the transition from global
scale back to local scale. OAK and ONRRI can be found on-line
through NWETI.com – the Northwest Education and Training Institute.
NWETI provides on-line classrooms to teachers and students who wish
to prioritize learning by gaining common knowledge, as opposed to the
current school system which illuminates relationships by sequestering
information in the hands of a few.
Now back to water. Water does not live in a democracy
– each water molecule is created equal, but undergoes a change of
perspective that is completely different when bound to a biological
system, rather than hanging out with his buddies in a bulk water
system. Looking at the solution from he perspective of an individual
water molecule, we will explore the nature of change in different
environments to foster the idea of the ubiquity of possibilities of
what change can bring.
As we discussed before, water bonded in water with
other water molecules will have an average HOH bond angle of 109o
and an oxygen-hydrogen bond length of roughly one point five angstrom
units.
The exact length is a measured average of many
individual measurements and changes constantly with vibrations. The
essential parameters of a water molecule are the HOH bond angle and
the length of the two OH bonds. These bonds have a symmetric
stretching mode – both hydrogen atoms far away from the oxygen
together and near the oxygen together. There is also an asymmetric
stretching mode, which has two identical pairs of possibility –
left hydrogen near, right hydrogen far and left hydrogen far, right
hydrogen near. These stretches produce characteristic frequencies in
the Infrared Range (IR) of the electromagnetic spectrum. A Fourier
Transformed Infrared Spectrometer (FTIR) is an essential laboratory
tool for qualitative analysis of chemical elements – very high on
the current wish list for the ONRRI lab. FLIR is a flight oriented
Infrared scanning technique used to orient airplanes.
When water is attracted to ions – it shifts the
wavelength of the vibration of the water molecule. The whole idea of
spectroscopy is to measure the changes in spectra at different
wavelengths and correlate it to changes in the physical environment
of the atoms involved. When the solution color is in the visible
region of the spectrum, you can use a different type of spectrometer
– the UV-Vis , ultraviolet/visible light spectrophotometer– in
order to hone in on the wavelengths produced between 200 – 800
nanometers. Cary makes the workhorse instrument – the Spec 20,
that is a fixture in every high school chemistry lab in the land. If
the tools of chemistry sequestered at the schools could be made
available for general use, then people could learn hands-on that
chemistry is just a means of measurement.
So let's get back to our water solution and let's now
populate the solution with ions. Since Dr. Lenny worked in a Nickel
mine – let's use the Ni2+ ion as the example. Nickel
weighs 60 amu and is a transition metal – number 28 in the periodic
table. The periodic table is the collection of all elements placed
into a categorical form that allows for the prediction of chemical
behaviors based on composition. It is a basic tool for understanding
the language – each element has a symbol, a number and a weight
that make the calculations easier to handle. Chemistry involves a
lot of simple calculations like addition and subtraction,
multiplication and division. More complex math can be very useful –
but is not really necessary to being able to collect the information.
We will try to avoid all math in this series, but realize that the
numbers do have meanings beyond the scope of this simplified vision
of water.
Nickel ions form a green colored solution with six
water molecules that have a square planar geometry. [Ni(H2O)6]2+
. The oxygen of each water are oriented toward the central nickel
atom, four in a plane about the circumference of the nickel – then
one on top and one on bottom. The hydrogen atoms are oriented
outward from the center – with the oxygen of other water molecules
in the solution towards the center and the hydrogen arrayed outward.
Recall that the weight of the nickel ion is about the same as three
water atoms. The hydration sphere of the hexa-aquo nickel complex
depends on the temperature – but is likely five or six levels deep
– each level fits more molecules around those connected – so we
have a sphere that is nearly 500 amu when two deep – you can see
where the actual weight of solvated ions adds up real quickly.
Nickel forms a red compound with dimethylglyoxime. The
formula is known to be Ni(dmg)2. By adding the nickel
containing solution to a dmg solution, we can quantitatively
precipitate the nickel and know exactly how much we had in solution.
We can also measure the concentration of a solution and correlate it
with the peak maximum of the red color in a Cary spectrophotometer.
The term aqueous solution is used to designate a
solution that is based in water. Free ions in solution always have
counter-ions in that solution to balance the charge. Thus the nickel
started as NiSO4 or NiCl2 and the reaction with
diglyme is a substitution type reaction. There are many different
metals that form cations in solution – the whole world of
coordination chemistry is a study of these types of systems.
When you consider the forces of polarity on the
micro-sphere scale – they appear to work the same way as the forces
of polarity on the human scale. Like attracts like in the form of
polar compounds like polar solvents – ionic compounds dissolve in
aqueous solution. The concentration of the solution is a measure of
the stuff dissolved in the water – this involves converting the
chemicals into moles, such that each chemical has it's molecular
weight factored into the chemistry equation.
Water does a lot more outside of the chemistry lab than
it does inside the lab. In the next nature of water episode, we will
explore the place where we find water. The differences between lakes
and streams and oceans and rivers will be explored with a large grain
of salt, in terms of what the water is composed with and how the
water thinks of itself.
Namaste' doc 04/11/13
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