Water polywater

The reports were that water condensed from the vapor phase into 10-100-/im quartz or pyrex capillaries had physical properties distinctly different from those of bulk liquid water. Confirmations came from a variety of laboratories around the world (see the August 1971 issue of Journal of Colloid Interface Science), and it was proposed that a new phase of water had been found many called this water polywater rather than the original Deijaguin term, anomalous water. There were confirming theoretical calculations (see Refs. 121, 122) Eventually, however, it was determined that the micro-amoimts of water that could be isolated from small capillaries was always contaminated by salts and other impurities leached from the walls. The nonexistence of anomalous or poly water as a new, pure phase of water was acknowledged in 1974 by Deijaguin and co-workers [123]. There is a mass of fascinating anecdotal history omitted here for lack of space but told very well by Frank [124]. 

Then the popular media took an interest. They turned a simmering scientific curiosity into a boiling concern. Polywater apparently had a powerful capacity for hydrogen bonding. What if it escaped from a laboratory There were dire predictions that polywater would take over Earth s water resources. The imagined consequences for life on Earth were grim. 

Eventually further studies revealed that polywater was simply a concentrated solution of silicon (silicic acid) and several ionic compounds in ordinary water. The glass tubing was the source of these solutes. They had leached into the water. 

The polywater event occurred because scientists overlooked, for awhile, water s remarkable power as a solvent. In this chapter, you will learn how to predict which compounds are soluble in water. As well, you will consider how chemical reactions in aqueous (water) solutions are useful in industry and in protecting the quality of our water supplies. 

The amusing story of polywater, which excited the scientific community for a few years during the late 1960 s and early 1970 s, has been reviewed by Franks [175]. It turned out that polywater was not a new and more stable form of pure water, but merely dirty water. The strange properties of polywater were due to high concentrations of siliceous material dissolved from quartz capillaries in which it was produced. 

Because of the close relationship to the mineral particles in the sediment, interlamellar water is usually of types (2) and (3). A special type of water, so-called "polywater" or "superwater", which has been reviewed and considered by Kamb (1971) and Henniker (1949), is a modification of water solution, as a result of impurities in a water solution. It is an interesting phenomenon, provided such solutions occur in nature. "Polywater" has been observed to have a density of about 1.4g/cm and a viscosity about 15 times greater than normal water. Capillaries with "polywater" might be expected in a finegrained sediment (Low and White, 1970) with a considerable amount of clay mineral particles like mud. The significance of the various t3q es of water in sediments must not be underestimated, as they may influence other processes taking place in the aqueous phase. 

Low, P. F. and J. L. White (1970). Hydrogen bonding and polywater in day-water systems. Clays and Clay Minerals 18, 63-66. 

In 1969, Ellis R. Fippincott (1920-74), at the University of Maryland College Park, performed the first infrared spectroscopic study of "anomalous water," discovered significant differences from the spectra of water, and hypothesized a polymeric form of water he called polywater. Frank J. Donahoe (1922- ), at Wilkes College, warned that if water could spontaneously change to polywater, then "I regard this polymer as... 

Kollman (1944-2001), later famous for studies of proteins, calculated the structure and properties of polymeric water. They relied on claims that the experimentalists were working with a pure substance. Allen and Kollman were limited to computations of only moderate sophistication. Their study, published in 1970, predicted a structure similar to graphite (regular "ice" is similar to diamond). Their calculated energies for polywater and liquid water were quite similar. This begged a question that many chemists had raised earlier If "anomalous water" or polywater forms so readily (and is comparable in energy to liquid water), why had it not been seen before and, for that matter. 

Deryagin and Churayev (1968) reported on a form of water with properties different from those well established for water, and the new form has been referred to as anomalous water. This water has been prepared by Fedyakin (1962) in a sealed glass capillary 2 to 4 jU in diameter and later by Deryagin et al. (1965) by the condensation of water vapor in glass and fused quartz capillaries at relative pressures somewhat less than unity. Among the properties of this water, renamed polywater by Lippincott et al. (1969), are (1) low vapor pressure (2) solidification at — 40°C or lower temperatures to a glass-like state with a substantially lower expansion than that of ordinary water when it freezes and (3) a density of I.OI to I.4g/cm and stability to temperatures of the order of 500°C. 

Donohue (1969) has proposed a structure for polywater which consists of hydrogen-bonded clusters of water molecules lying at the vertices of rhombic dodecahedra. 

Polywater (also called anomalous water), which was first described in the 1960s in the Soviet Union and controversially discussed in the 1970s, does not exist, however, and was probably a mixture of colloidal silicic acid. 

Two years later polywater was dead. Several groups had published studies showing that polywater was indeed solutions of silicates and/or organic materials. The spectroscopists had published a declaration to the effect that their samples had been impure, and the quantum chemists had found that more accurate calculations showed that the polymeric structure with symmetric O-H-O bonds had higher energy than normal water [32]. 

For a fuller account of the poly water affair see F. Franks, Polywater, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1981. 

Meanwhile, the notion of a new form of water sparked an enormous controversy. Those who trusted the experimental results came up with theories to explain what might have caused polywater to form. The most famous theory was based on early quantum mechanics (QM) calculations, which mistakenly (and unintentionally) showed that the water molecules generated symmetric bonds, -H-O-H-O-H-O-which connect oxygen to hydrogen, and these interactions thereby turned the water molecules into a polymer rather than being the collection of discrete molecules that makeup water as we know it. 

Scientific and popular furor followed. Apparently, someone recalled Vonnegut s novel, and the worry arose and quickly escalated into a panic. On September 22nd, 1969, The New York Times published an article in this respect, expressing the concern that if polywater were to come in contact with ordinary water, the plain water on our planet would all turn into a viscous polymer too Scientists were urged to treat polywater as a deadly substance until it was shown definitively to be safe—even though no one could make more than a drop of poly water at a time, and even though no one had ever demonstrated that poly water had any effect on plain water. 

In the end, poly water samples were subjected to much closer scrutiny and were all shown to contain some contamination with impurities of substances suspended in ordinary water. When the original experiments were repeated with extraordinary care given to cleaning the apparatus, pol5iwater could no longer be produced By 1972, most of the world s scientists considered the case closed, and by 1973, even Deryagin conceded that polywater did not exist. 

Polywater pa-le- w6-tor [polymeric water] (1969) n. In late 1960s, it was reported that the Soviet physicist, Boris Derjaguin, had discovered a polymeric form of water, formed by condensing ordinary water on the inside quartz capillary tubing of very fine bore. Properties of the polymer, dubbed polywater, were said to be thermal stability up to 50° C, density equal to 1.4g/ cm, i.e., 40% greater than that of ordinary water, and solidification to a glass-like state at —40°C. There were subsequent reports that USA scientists had confirmed the existence of polywater. Later, however, the discoverer of polywater admitted that the substance he had created was actually impurities dissolved from the quartz tubes used in the experiment. 

It was argued by some, early on in the story, that pol5water was simply impure water since boiling point elevation and freezing point depression are colligative properties characteristic of solutions. However, the flurry of papers emphasized the precautions that had been taken to avoid contamination, so for several years the existence of polywater was taken for granted as a real phenomenon. However, eventually the case for polywater began to crumble. Because it could only be formed in quartz capillaries of very small internal diameter, very little was available for analysis. When eventually small samples could be subjected to trace chemical analysis, polywater was shown to be contaminated with a variety of substances from silica to phospholipids. Moreover, electron microscopy revealed that polywater also contained finely divided colloidal particulates in suspension. 

At this point the experiments that had produced pol water were repeated with extreme precautions, including rigorous cleaning of glassware. As a result 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. There was no question of scientific fraud. In retrospect it was simply a case where meticulous physical experiments turned out to be of no value because the subject of the experiments was not a simple pure substance, but a complex chemical mixture albeit one in which the components that caused the problem were present at ultra-trace levels. 

The dependence of the surface tension of pure water was found to exhibit anomalies [44] in the sense that the corresponding curve showed inflection points at several temperatures (15, 30, 45, 60 C,...). Anomalies, also called kinks , were also found for other properties of pure water, such as viscosity, compressibihty or magnetic susceptibility besides, polywater has been the subject of much interest [49]. However, more careful studies have finally [38] pointed to the absence of kinks in the behavior of pure water the anomalies described previously are now believed to have resulted from some artefacts or to have been within experimental error. 

Is THE Giant Structure of Water Anything to Do WITH Polywater ... 

Recently, however, people that advocate homeopathic remedies have brought back the idea of polywater to try to explain their assertions that highly diluted medicines can affect or even cure certain ailments. They claim that because its structure changes depending on what molecules it has interacted with, polywater gives water a memory this is, they say, why homeopathic remedies supposedly work even though... 

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