Talk:Water

Wip

--Robert W King 12:23, 22 August 2007 (CDT)

Possible References:

• http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/WeighingWater/
• http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/molecule.html
• http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/characteristics.html

Elements

There are four "elements" of the earth--water, fire, wind, and earth itself; I have tried to alleviate any potential confusion by adding "non-chemical" element, and I hope it suits. --Robert W King 12:36, 23 August 2007 (CDT)

"Non-chemical" does not make sense. See my edit summary. Michael Hardy 17:16, 24 August 2007 (CDT)

Definition of water

On the question of the definition of water: interestingly, in the philosophy of language, it is often discussed as an example what the meaning of "water" is (particularly, whether H20 is the "definition" of water--Putnam asked, if you came across something on "Twin Earth" that had the same observable properties as water, but was not H20, would that be water?). This is perhaps irrelevant, except in this general point: to speak of the definition of words for what philosophers call "natural kinds" (like water) is highly problematic. This does not mean that the words cannot be given definitions (obviously, they can), but rather that the criteria one might use to decide what is an "objective definition," so to speak, are not at all clear. And then of course most philosophers, following Wittgenstein and Quine, would in fact deny that words for natural kinds could be given definitions at all.

I suspect that asserting that water "by definition" is or is not liquid belies any understanding of these issues. Many people do mean something liquid when they speak of water, but maybe that's just because that's how water usually is when we encounter it. Anyway, if water were a liquid "by definition," then it would be contradictory to speak of frozen water, or water in a gaseous state. Clearly, that is not (always) contradictory, because we do use those phrases with good sense. --Larry Sanger 20:18, 24 August 2007 (CDT)

Also...stylistically, this article badly needs work. The style is wordy and pretentious-sounding. We can do much better. --Larry Sanger 20:20, 24 August 2007 (CDT)

Freezing point

The freezing point of water is not well-defined. However the melting point of hexagonal Ih ice (the naturally abundant ice) is well defined, it is 273.152519 K = 0.002519 celcius at 101.325 kPa see [1]--Paul Wormer 08:02, 31 August 2007 (CDT)

Paul--in what context should this information be added? I'm slightly mystified. --Robert W King 10:12, 31 August 2007 (CDT)

I don't know either, that is why I put it here and not in the article. Maybe when somebody extends the article this small piece of information can be entered into it.--Paul Wormer 11:18, 31 August 2007 (CDT)

You got me!

You got me, Eddie! I'm slack on filling out the subpages pages. --Robert W King 21:45, 22 October 2007 (CDT)

That's what colleagues are for, eh? :-) --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 21:48, 22 October 2007 (CDT)

Interloper

Robert: Pardon my interloping and changing the approach to 'water'. You should feel free to undo and/or change it any way you see fit. Consider it only a suggestion. --Anthony.Sebastian (Talk) 23:05, 22 October 2007 (CDT)

I don't mind the changes at all as long as nothing factually was changed, although I did change the second title to "definition" as opposed to "other perspectives", because we have only the human perspective to work with. As far as any real objections, I defer to Dr Tito. --Robert W King 23:09, 22 October 2007 (CDT)

So far what I see is interesting, not just science but other interests as well. I wonder however if the topic of drought is brought up whtat will happen. The intention was to make it "multi-media"-like aka many different approaches. This seems to work. I do like to keep things in scientific line, no nonsense but stay to facts and adher to facts. By the way the name is Rob, if you like to keep it formal it's Dr. Tito. The one thing that's lacking and I haven't found a good example yet is a caged molecule in 3D by water as solvent as well as a visualization of the carbon (tetraeder) structure of water. These are sparse unfortunately. Anyone with a good link??? Robert Tito |  Talk 

Rest energy

I'm puzzled by the following sentence:

When cooled down to 0 K (absolute zero) or as close as can be practically achieved water is the only known substance (as of this date) that has a rest vibrational energy.

Surely we don't talk about molecular vibrations here, this statement must relate to lattice vibrations. You are saying here that excited state lattice vibrations are populated at 0 K? This can only happen if there is some selection rule forbidding the transition to the ground state. Do you have a reference? --Paul Wormer 02:16, 23 October 2007 (CDT)

Common versus scientific usage

The introduction makes a very weird distinction between common and scientific use of water, as I as a scientist use water mainly in what is claimed to be the common use of that term. Kim van der Linde 07:03, 23 October 2007 (CDT)

Scientific vs regular view

I actually think including two different views, one "layman" view and one "scientific" view is a decent way to present information--but it doesnt' change what water actually is. Does the reword help at all or does it still seem strange? Maybe a rewrite of that section would help? --Robert W King 22:38, 30 October 2007 (CDT)

I'm no longer sure which particular rewording you have in mind. However: Certainly different views should be there, but it should not be made to appear that the lay person and the scientist may be talking about two different things. Michael Hardy 21:40, 9 November 2007 (CST)

The biology perspective, quality, treatment...

In biology and health sciences, I'd say we can consider two basic kinds of water: hard water and soft water. Pure water (=H2O) is an abstraction: we encounter different degrees of water hardness, but, for living things, water is a vector not only of microbes, but of minerals. (DEF: the more minerals, the harder the water)

The World Health Organization has been concerned by the treatment of waters, which removes everything but H2O. I quote:

The group concluded that there is sufficient epidemiological evidence of an inverse relationship between calcium and magnesium concentrations in drinking water and ischemic heart disease mortality, and that consumption of water containing calcium and magnesium, and therefore also the reintroduction of Mg and Ca into demineralized water in the remineralization process would likely provide health benefits in those consumer populations. There are no known harmful human health effects associated with the addition of calcium and magnesium within a large range and the nutritional benefits are...

This should be connected (in particular, but not only) to the end of the CZ article:

In recent decades a market for "bottled water" has developed. This water is often advertised to have been additionally filtered, or to have come from a spring in order to enhance its "purity". The benefit of this bottled water has been disputed for a long time. Nutrient minerals in drinking-water and the potential health consequences of consumption of demineralized and remineralized and altered mineral content drinking-water: Consensus of the meeting (or cf WHO expert group page)

This "dispute", can be characterized as a non-debate between

1) The pure water market who advertises an abstract notion of purity

and the

2) Scientists who recognize that minerals are essential parts of what we call water.

I would suggest to use the term "vector": Something like: "in biology / in living things, water is not only (H2O), but also a vector for various molecules / minerals and microorganisms."

Pierre-Alain Gouanvic 01:40, 14 January 2008 (CST)