On the Nature of Water

    Sometimes, the things we know best are the things we know least. As we shift into a world that has different meanings, the time has come to rediscover what we believe we already know. The simple substance water is not nearly as simple as we profess and the thyme has come to explore water at a deeper level. Let's make a swan dive into the deep end, then swim back to the surface level to integrate the picture.

    Water is a molecule that consists of three atoms – a central oxygen atom attached to two hydrogen atoms. In basic chemistry, we learned that hydrogen has a weight of one atomic mass unit per atom and oxygen has a weight of 16 amu. This means that water weighs 18 amu – thus it has 18 grams per mole. This mole is a furry rascal who does chemical accounting – he keeps track of atoms on a small ratio basis.

   The nature of chemical geography suggests that bound atoms arrange their shapes to give all other atoms enough breathing room. The nature of chemistry is such that atoms repel each other based on the arrangements of electron pairs about a central nucleus which is made up of protons and neutrons. Each nuclear subatomic particle, proton and neutron, contributes one amu to the weight of an atom. The electrons have no mass on the amu scale, however they govern the arrangement of atoms in space.

    Let's talk about atoms in space. We know what space is, because we are all stardust and space cadets who stare up at the sky at night and ask what it is all about. We can see the stars and they are far out there way far away from us – and we wonder sometimes. On the scale of chemistry – the space units are likely just as far away from each other as the stars are away from each other on this scale. When we consider all that we know on many frames of the scale, we tend to draw parallels between the things we know and the things we don't know. This is convenient, but not proper.

    We need to say, 'I don't know' when we really don't know, instead of making things up as we go along based on other things that we think we know. Adjacent fractals have to be similar to each other in order to get a blend in continuity, but as you move between Fibonacci numbers, you find that the transitions are sharper at lower numbers. Chemistry and sociology both work best when following group theory, which is a math method of setting point groups in space. Sacred geometry holds many answers to the questions of nature at all levels of scale – the systems look the same but act very differently – based on relative weight of participants.

    Now getting back to water – water has a bent shape where the angle between the HOH bond is 109^o . This is quite different from the CO₂ linear arrangement that has an OCO bond angel of 180^o. This is because water is based on a tetrahedral shape – the same basic structure as carbon has in organic chemistry with four bonds available. Water uses the extra two bonds available to attach to adjacent water molecules. Water molecules tend to cluster with other water molecules, because, we water molecules are little guys in the total scheme of things. Water is not called the universal solvent because of its charm – but because of its strangeness – its quarks have quirks – but that pertains to physics more than chemistry. Let's just say that water is ant sized in relation to most biological entities that it deals with.

    The chemical composition of the ocean and the chemical composition of the blood stream are very similar in the as above, so below sense of things. Each has many dissolved salts that are ions conducting an electric flow path that integrates entities that rely on the water for sustenance. Water comes in swarms and attracts based on the polarity of molecules – the distribution of extra or fewer electrons to distribute balance between ions. A negative ion, called an anion, has extra electrons that balance out atomic charges within a molecule, while a positive ion, called a cation, has donated the electron to the anion and does not wish to receive it back.

    Water solvates these ions and allows them to separate from each other, as long as the electrostatic charge between the two (or more) ions allows for the dissolution. There are measured tables of activity constants and electrochemical potentials that suggest the relative inorganic chemistry – the solubility product of an ionic compound can be looked up conveniently. Aqueous chemistry is a field that deals with mostly ionic compounds and is the basis for qualitative analysis – the idea of analyzing the composition of a mixture of things.

    We conveniently call these ions minerals and stop our chemical investigations because we fear to tread into areas of biochemistry and medicine. This is foolish because we assume that doctors actually understand chemistry before they learn biochemistry – in reel life that happens and we are addicted to movies. This life is just like a movie and you are the supreme director – the more truth that you really know, the better equipped you are to make good decisions that affect your immediate future. This is enough chemistry for one sitting – if you integrate the concepts here – the next edition of the world of water will be more illuminating.

Namaste' doc