Liquid Water Crystals

The more scientists learn about "simple" things, the less simple they seem. Water, for instance, was long considered a simple mass of independent molecules jostling one another aimlessly, like marbles in a bag. Then someone noticed that when sound waves pass through water, they lose more energy than they theoretically should. A possible explanation: water molecules may be arranged in groups like small, loose crystals. If there are such "crystals," a sound wave would distort them, thus expending some of its energy.

Last week Harvard Physics Professor Gerald J. Holton told how he found new evidence to prove this theory. He put water in a small cartridge and compressed it up to 180,000 Ibs. per square inch. In one end of the cartridge was a quartz disc which turned electrical impulses into sound waves. When the sound waves had passed through the water-filled cartridge and echoed back, the quartz turned them again into electrical impulses. By measuring with an oscilloscope the energy of the reflected impulses, Professor Holton could tell how much energy the sound waves had lost in passing through the compressed water.

He found that the waves lost very little energy during their roundtrip. His conclusion: the pressure collapses the water crystals, packing the molecules into a structureless mass. Only then does the water behave like the "classical liquid" it seems to be.

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