• Question: how does water dance differently on different surfaces?

    Asked by anon-205721 to Jose Angel on 7 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Jose Angel Martinez-Gonzalez

      Jose Angel Martinez-Gonzalez answered on 7 Mar 2019:


      Water has several ways of “dancing”. On the one hand, this is how a molecule moves, which would be the general dance steps. In this image, you can see what are the movements that each molecule can do:

      And on the other hand, it is like water dancing together.

      Liquid water does not dance in the form of ice or in a gaseous state. In a snowflake the movements are like in a Tattoo, all ordered, rhythmic, following a pattern. Something like this:

      In other surfaces, it is more similar to this :

      Some are grouped like “clusters”, others are dancing alone, all depende of the space and the music that was playing.

      Part of my job is to see how these differences are to know where and how water likes to dance to the water. We know what are the basic steps (atomic movements) and we have different devices (spectrometers, spectrophotometers) that help us say, depending on the physical state or the environment as this dance is produced.

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