Water - a unique liquid
Date
1978
Authors
Fletcher, Neville H.
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Publisher
Australian Academy of Science
Abstract
From the point of view of mankind, water is certainly the most important
simple substance in the world. It is a very general and powerful solvent so
that the oceans, which account for more than 99 percent of Earth's water,
have a large solute content. At the same time Earth's ice caps contain
something like 30 million cubic kilometres of ice with an impurity
content measured in parts per million. The Earth's weather and the
erosive processes which determine its surface topography both arise from
the fact that phase changes between the solid, liquid, and vapour states of
water can readily occur. And finally, most biological processes take place
in a cellular environment of which liquid water is the main constituent.
It is of course possible to take the view that water plays this ubiquitous
role simply because of the astronomical chance which made it the only
abundantly occurring liquid on Earth's surface. On the other hand so
many geophysical and biological processes depend so critically upon the
unique properties of water that the substitution of any other liquid would
either prevent them occurring or at least modify them almost beyond
recognition.
My object in this symposium is to discuss some of the unique properties of water, to show how they derive from the structure of the water
molecule, and thus to set the stage for the detailed discussions that follow
on the role of water in geophysical, biological, and social systems.
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Planets, Plants and People: a symposium held at Canberra on 29 April 1977
Type
Conference paper
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Restricted until
2037-12-31
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