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Fascinating to see how water has remained an unsolved problem for so long. In some ways we know less now than before. When I was an undergraduate physical che
by OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago
Fascinating to see how water has remained an unsolved problem for so long. In some ways we know less now than before. When I was an undergraduate physical chemistry student 137 years ago, it was a well-known fact that ice skates worked because the phase diagram for water said it would be a liquid at the pressure and temperature underneath the blade. Now, all we know is that that is not the case.
Nice to see the occasional physical chemistry article in HN (or, in Quanta for that matter.) Some of my professors and colleagues have dedicated their lives to the fundamentals of water; theory and experiment from gas phase spectroscopy of water dimers, trimers, and clusters to stat-mech of the condensed phases of which there are so many.
On the macro scale, water availability or the lack of it, will loom large in the coming years. My late father dedicated a lot of his life to the implications.
- sleepytimetea 2y agoWow - "When I was an undergraduate physical chemistry student 137 years ago" - you really are the oldest guy in this club.
- anonzzzies 2y agoFor me it feels more like 1000 years ago that I did. I haven’t touched physics even once after uni as I went into software dev so it was another life that feels ‘outside’ me.
- irrational 2y agoHow many people has software development sucked up? One of my previous coworkers has a doctorate in mathematics. He now works as a php web developer.
- OldGuyInTheClub 2y agoYa gotta type louder, I don't see as well as I used to. ;-)
- kbelder 2y agoI read that absolutely credulously. I thought "137 years ago? Would that phase transition under pressure be widely known around 1890?" then after a few moments of pondering... "wait a minute!"
- roer 2y agoIt seems that there is a pretty good explanation for the slipperiness of ice now: https://youtu.be/20zyW0qoSTE https://youtu.be/20zyW0qoSTE (referencing this article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07427-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07427-8) Layman tl;dw: on the surface of ice the crystal structure isn't perfect, leaving some water molecules able to move around as if they were in a liquid.
- OldGuyInTheClub 2y agoThanks for this. Lots of familiar names in the references including, in a big surprise, my undergraduate research advisor and another colleague with whom I worked closely in his lab. My first published scientific paper was with both of them. My advisor is a legendary surface scientist but I had no idea he had studied ice formation on his beloved single-crystal surfaces! I look forward to reading the full paper.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoDoes their work extend to snow and skiing?
- Digit-Al 2y ago> When I was an undergraduate physical chemistry student 137 years ago Wow! How old are you? Lol
- eleveriven 2y ago> Fascinating to see how water has remained an unsolved problem for so long. Despite being a simple molecule with just three atoms