Iconoclast
Jedi Master
some time ago i stumbled on this subject by accident. i was a bit surprised (especially given my interest in the amazing properties of water) that i hadn't heard about it before.
here is a quick summary:
excerpted from:
_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywater
_http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/11/polywater_history_and_science_mistakes_the_u_s_and_ussr_raced_to_create.html
now here we come to the heart of the matter why this subject is still bouncing around in my head:
SO WHAT if the properties of the substance were due to "impurities"? that doesn't change the fact that it had interesting properties!
water in its pure chemical form (H2O) doesn't occur in nature anyway and is very hard to produce. it also doesn't conduct electricity. that only happens with the addition of salts.
calling H2O "water" is like calling a plain slice of bread a sandwich! without salts and other substances in solution it is "empty". all the magic in nature only begins to happen once other stuff is added to the "H2O"!
so why was polywater dismissed? did it violate our all-important mathematical models of how the universe is supposed to work and was therefore banished?
inquiring minds want to know... ;)
here is a quick summary:
Polywater was a hypothesized polymerized form of water that was the subject of much scientific controversy during the late 1960s.
The Soviet physicist Nikolai Fedyakin, working at a small government research lab in Kostroma, Russia, had performed measurements on the properties of water that had been condensed in, or repeatedly forced through, narrow quartz capillary tubes. Some of these experiments resulted in what was seemingly a new form of water with a higher boiling point, lower freezing point, and much higher viscosity than ordinary water, about that of a syrup.
Investigations of the material properties showed a substantially lower freezing point of −40 °C or less, a boiling point of 150 °C or greater, a density of approx. 1.1 to 1.2 g/cm³, and increased expansion with increasing temperature.
Instead of freezing at 0 degrees Celsius, it solidified in a brownish glassy state at minus 40 degrees; no matter how high they heated it, it didn’t boil away.
In 1969, the Office of Naval Research hosted a special symposium on polywater—a reflection of the military’s strategic desire to avoid ceding a scientific lead in polywater to the Soviets.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency (which later became the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) awarded a grant of $75,000 to Tycho Labs of Boston to mass-produce it.
Some argued that the substance was responsible for the plasticity of clay. Others said it accounted for the ability of winter wheat seeds to survive in frozen ground and the way some animals are capable of lowering their body temperatures below 0 degrees Celsius without freezing. In total, nearly 100 scientific papers on polywater were published in the year 1970 alone, based on samples generated in labs across the country and fueled by funding from the U.S. Navy.
During this time several people questioned the authenticity of what had come to be known in the West as polywater. The main concern was contamination of the water, but the papers went to great lengths to note the care taken to avoid this. Denis Rousseau and Sergio Porto of Bell Labs carried out infrared spectrum analysis which showed polywater was made mostly of chlorine and sodium.
Chemical analysis found that samples of polywater were contaminated with other substances (explaining the changes in melting and boiling points), and examination of polywater via electron microscopy showed that it also contained small particles of various solids from silica to phospholipids, explaining its greater viscosity.
When the experiments that had produced polywater were repeated with thoroughly cleaned glassware, the anomalous properties of the resulting water vanished, and even the scientists who had originally advanced the case for polywater agreed that it did not exist. This took a few years longer in the Soviet Union, where scientists still clung to the idea.
In August, 1973, Derjaguin and N. V. Churaev published a letter in the journal Nature in which they write that, "these [anomalous] properties should be attributed to impurities rather than to the existence of polymeric water molecules."
excerpted from:
_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywater
_http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/11/polywater_history_and_science_mistakes_the_u_s_and_ussr_raced_to_create.html
now here we come to the heart of the matter why this subject is still bouncing around in my head:
SO WHAT if the properties of the substance were due to "impurities"? that doesn't change the fact that it had interesting properties!
water in its pure chemical form (H2O) doesn't occur in nature anyway and is very hard to produce. it also doesn't conduct electricity. that only happens with the addition of salts.
calling H2O "water" is like calling a plain slice of bread a sandwich! without salts and other substances in solution it is "empty". all the magic in nature only begins to happen once other stuff is added to the "H2O"!
so why was polywater dismissed? did it violate our all-important mathematical models of how the universe is supposed to work and was therefore banished?
inquiring minds want to know... ;)
