# Water

An interesting summary, by John Baez, of experimental findings and theoretical conjectures around the hydronium chemical structure.

Over a year ago, I wrote here about ice. It has 16 known forms with different crystal geometries. The most common form on Earth, hexagonal ice I, is a surprisingly subtle blend of order and randomness:

Liquid water is even more complicated. It’s mainly a bunch of molecules like this jostling around:

The two hydrogens are tightly attached to the oxygen. But accidents do happen. On average, for every 555 million molecules of water, one is split into a negatively charged OH⁻ and a positively charged H⁺. And this actually matters a lot, in chemistry. It’s the reason we say water has pH 7.

Why? By definition, pH 7 means that for every liter of water, there’s 10-7 moles of H⁺. That’s where the 7 comes from. But there’s 55.5 moles of water in every liter, at least when the water is cold so its density is almost…

View original post 1,486 more words

$\Sigma_{n=0}^{\infty} \frac{1}{2}$