Water we waiting for - post from Dec 2006

The substance that is all over the place is all over the place. Water is not terribly complex chemically, so we tend to overlook the real utility of the substance. Water is the anomaly that makes things tick - because it can use itself to create different forms, like snowflakes - and because it can hitch a ride on many other items. Water molecules gather in packets small and large - but if you think that the world might be overpopulated with people, calculate how many individual water molecules there must be in the world.

Eitch two oh. Really, the medium, the carrier and the substance, all in one. Carbon provides the framework for life, but the integration with water is the mojo rising. Small quantity trace elements reside in water - it might be interesting to walk thru a dilution visually. Water maintains a temperature dependent equilibrium - movement of exchange occurs continually, but with reversibility - as one attaches, another one lets go. Rate - how fast it happens - is the bothersome feature - because we just assume time in constant forward units.

One of the fallacies that has me thinking is the difference between molecular properties and bulk properties. Emergent properties are things that arise out of a bulk material that just don't exist on a smaller level - one water molecule is not wet, one hundred water molecules are not wet, nor a million. But at some point the water becomes wet, so wetness is an emerging property. The sum seems greater than the parts by the additional value of the emergent property, unless there is a counterbalancing force that reenforces the conservation of matter and energy - the first law. In the vast continuum of fractal life, perhaps there is another force to be identified - the one that enables water to produce electrical continuuity that enables thought in a carbon structure lattice.