Greater Knowledge of Water Required 1927

WATER A CHEMICAL MYSTERY

Water, our very commonest material, is one of the great mysteries of modern chemistry, according to Dean James Kendall, of New York University, as quoted in Chemicals (New York). He says:

“Because water is so universal in our own small part of the universe, we take it for granted that we know all about it, and on this more or less casual assumption we have built up a vast structure of theory when we are completely ignorant of the basis of the assumption. At the present time we still allow our oxygen environment (the atmosphere) to influence our definitions. We call a body ‘ combustible if it burns in the air, and ‘ non-combustible if it does not. That such terms have no strict scientific meaning is evident if we imagine ourselves to be translated, for the moment, to a world in which hydrogen is the active constituent of the atmosphere instead of oxygen. In such a world, everything would be topsy-turvy. Fires would be extinguished by sprinkling gasoline on them, and fireproof buildings would consist of solid paraffin! The modern science of physical chemistry has been almost wholly developed through the study of materials dissolved in water, and a scrutiny of this water environ-ment suffices to show us that our present view-point is considerably distorted and incomplete in many respects. Water itself is almost as much a mystery to the chemist of to-day as oxygen was to Priestley a hundred and fifty years ago. We call it H2O, when we are perfectly sure that that is not what it is. What the actual complexity of the water molecule is, and how this is changed by dissolving something in it, are points on which we are entirely ignorant. Instead of being a substance which can be neglected, water is perhaps the most reactive, in a chemical sense, of all substances. When we cease to neglect and abuse water and begin to recognize its proper importance, a new and sounder chemistry will be born.”

Source: The Literary Digest for November 5, 1927

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