The weirdness of water
Can we explain the strange properties of water by thinking of it as two different liquids? Rachel Brazil dives into the ongoing debate
Water, the most commonplace of liquids, is also the strangest. It has at least 66 properties that differ from most liquids – high surface tension, high heat capacity, high melting and boiling points and low compressibility. Some chemists have even suggested that water is not a complicated liquid but ‘two simple liquids with a complicated relationship’. For some, this statement contradicts the basic principles of physical chemistry; for others it explains just why water behaves in such an anomalous way.
Over the last decade the academic arguments have reached boiling point.