"Water, the Strangest Liquid in the Universe"

[william.scherk]

That's the title of an article up at the Open Mind: a Knowledge Community site.  

Quote

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A WEIRD PHYSICAL-CHEMICAL PHENOMENON

It can be inferred from the above that the aberrant properties of water are, as chemist Martin Chaplin, professor emeritus at the London South Bank University, confirmed to OpenMind, “totally responsible” for the existence of life on Earth. In fact, adds Nilsson, curiously “it looks like water becomes anomalous at temperatures where life seems to exist most of the time.” But what kind of weird physical-chemical phenomenon should we thank for our existence? According to Chaplin, “there are several explanations, but none have proven to be conclusive or all embracing.” At its origin are the peculiar characteristics of oxygen, one of the most electronegative elements of the periodic table. When combined with hydrogen it attracts the electrons to itself with such force that the water molecule, although electrically neutral as a whole, forms two poles, positive and negative.

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Water, the strangest Liquid in the Universe

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The floating of the ice is one of the oddities of water, a substance so familiar that it seems ordinary, but that has nothing ordinary.

 

A video on the subject from the same crew: