If asked to imagine what the strangest substances to be found naturally on planet Earth is, most people would most likely imagine something with a particularly large obscure chemical name, however, in truth, one of the strangest chemicals to be found on earth is one that everyone that has ever lived -and every living thing for that matter- will be familiar with. It’s no other than good old H₂O (i.e. water).
Bollocks! I hear you say. Well, first of all don’t swear, and secondly, it’s true. If you give some of the properties of water a little thought you’ll soon realize just how strange it is. For example, imagine yourself on a boat at sea on a foggy night and you come across an iceberg. At first this may seem like one of the most normal things in the world; that is, until you really think about what you’re observing. What you would be looking at is frozen solid water (the iceberg) floating in liquid water (the sea) surrounded by gaseous water (the fog). Almost no other naturally occurring substance is capable of existing in three different states of matter -within such a narrow temperature range- at once (on Earth at least).
Not only that, but water also has a vast array of other weird properties. For example, it expands as it cools below approximately 4 degrees Celsius –as anyone that put a can of irn bru in the freezer only to have it “explode” will know. It is also a highly polar molecule capable of dissolving both polar and non-polar substances alike (a particularly unusual property that has lead to it sometimes being referred to as “the universal solvent”).
Bollocks! I hear you say. Well, first of all don’t swear, and secondly, it’s true. If you give some of the properties of water a little thought you’ll soon realize just how strange it is. For example, imagine yourself on a boat at sea on a foggy night and you come across an iceberg. At first this may seem like one of the most normal things in the world; that is, until you really think about what you’re observing. What you would be looking at is frozen solid water (the iceberg) floating in liquid water (the sea) surrounded by gaseous water (the fog). Almost no other naturally occurring substance is capable of existing in three different states of matter -within such a narrow temperature range- at once (on Earth at least).
Not only that, but water also has a vast array of other weird properties. For example, it expands as it cools below approximately 4 degrees Celsius –as anyone that put a can of irn bru in the freezer only to have it “explode” will know. It is also a highly polar molecule capable of dissolving both polar and non-polar substances alike (a particularly unusual property that has lead to it sometimes being referred to as “the universal solvent”).