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How and why are difficult words. I mean, in some senses we don't even know why water is wet. My very limited understanding of the subject is that in supercrit
by cperciva 3y ago
How and why are difficult words. I mean, in some senses we don't even know why water is wet. My very limited understanding of the subject is that in supercritical water there are larger clumps of H2O molecules surrounding the isolated H+ and OH- ions and this affects the solvent behavior.
Note that the chemistry of supercritical water is something which is very hard to study -- needing to keep a sample under extreme conditions means that you can't probe it in many of the normal ways. My father did groundbreaking work in this area using Muon Spin Spectroscopy, because he could shoot a beam of muons into a sample which was otherwise inaccessible.
(Shameless plug: My father recently retired and wrote a book on the topic with two of his colleagues. If you search for "Muon Spin Spectroscopy Percival" you should find it in all the usual places.)
- dylan604 3y ago> I mean, in some senses we don't even know why water is wet. That's something that made me go "wait, what?" But then after waiting, and thinking about it, it is just a question that I've never even considered. It's one of those things where I really wished I had better understanding of chemistry.
- iraqmtpizza 3y agoWish some of this pathological humility could find its way into climate science.
- fuzzfactor 3y ago>we don't even know why water is wet. As a chemist it makes me want to take a dip in the ocean. To try and figure it out ;)
- 082349872349872 3y agoWater is wet when you take that dip because it has a small contact angle with skin; is that still chemistry or are we now in physics?
- selimthegrim 2y agoI think they mean quantum mechanically, or London dispersion forces or dipoles
- selimthegrim 3y agoYou don't think there's millions of man-hours of work behind the models, including quite a bit of atmospheric chemistry?
- iraqmtpizza 3y agoThere has been half a century of work put into string theory and there is no shred of humility there, pathological or otherwise. Amount of work put in is irrelevant.
- selimthegrim 3y agoFairly well understood partial differential equations which are physically validated or isotopic atmospheric chemistry are a little bit different than string theory
- iraqmtpizza 3y agoYou're not sounding very humble right now
- littlestymaar 3y agoBecause you think you do, I guess?
- iraqmtpizza 3y agoI'm not the one screaming for 100 trillion dollars lol. A 2009 survey of US temperature stations found that 89% were improperly sited according to NOAA’s own Air Temperature Siting Standards (100 feet from any extensive concrete or paved surface, etc). A 2022 survey found that 96% were sited improperly.
- selimthegrim 3y agoDo you think that nighttime temperature rising independent of Milanković cycles can be put down to faulty stations?