All the water in the world (1.4087 billion cubic kilometres of it) including sea water, ice, lakes, rivers, ground water, clouds, etc. |
All the air in the atmosphere (5140 trillion tonnes of it) gathered into a ball at sea-level density. Shown on the same scale as the Earth. |
{ Dan Phiffer }
Snowflakes are symmetrical because they reflect the internal order of the water molecules as they arrange themselves in the solid state (the process of crystallization). (…)
The growth of snowflakes (or of any substance changing from a liquid to a solid state) is known as crystallization. During this process, the molecules (in this case, water molecules) align themselves to maximize attractive forces and minimize repulsive ones. As a result, the water molecules arrange themselves in predetermined spaces and in a specific arrangement. This process is much like tiling a floor in accordance with a specific pattern: once the pattern is chosen and the first tiles are placed, then all the other tiles must go in predetermined spaces in order to maintain the pattern of symmetry. Water molecules simply arrange themselves to fit the spaces and maintain symmetry; in this way, the different arms of the snowflake are formed.
There are many different types of snowflakes (as in the cliché that ‘no two snowflakes are alike’); this differentiation occurs because each snowflake is a separate crystal that is subject to the specific atmospheric conditions, notably temperature and humidity, under which it is formed.
photos { Snow Crystal Photo Gallery | Magnified snowflake }
With water becoming increasingly precious in California, a rising number of farmers figure they can make more money by selling their water than by actually growing something.
Because farmers get their water at subsidized rates, some of them see financial opportunity this year in selling their allotments to Los Angeles and other desperately thirsty cities across Southern California, as well as to other farms.
“It just makes dollars and sense right now,” said Bruce Rolen, a third-generation farmer who grows rice, wheat and other crops in Northern California’s lush Sacramento Valley.
Instead of sowing in April, Rolen plans to let 100 of his 250 acres of white rice lie fallow and sell his irrigation water on the open market, where it could fetch up to three times the normal price.
What effect these deals will have on produce prices remains to be seen, because the negotiations are still going on and it is not yet clear how many acres will be taken out of production. But California grows most of the nation’s winter vegetables and about 80 percent of the world’s almonds, and is the No. 2 rice state, behind Arkansas.
artwork { Tony Feher, installation view at Chinati Foundation, Stable Building, Marfa, Texas, 2005-06 }
Let’s say you’re alone on a raft in the middle of the South Pacific, with no fresh water to speak of. What would happen to you if you drank seawater?
The answer is that we only need a small amount of salt to live. According to the Salt Institute (a non-profit association of salt producers, founded in 1914), the recommended daily dose is around 500 mg/day–around a quarter of a teaspoonful. The optimal amount of salt varies based on the person’s lifestyle, genetic makeup and geographic location (basically, all factors that affect how often and how much you sweat). Most Americans consume much more than they need, around 3500 mg/day. (…)
Take a lot of salt into your body and your metabolism very quickly goes into crisis. From every cell, water molecules rush off like so many voluntary firemen to try to dilute and carry off the sudden intake of salt. This leaves the cells dangerously short of the water they need to carry out their normal functions. They become, in a word, dehydrated. In extreme situations, dehydration will lead to seizures, unconsciousness, and brain damage. Meanwhile, the overworked blood cells carry the salt to the kidneys, which eventually become overwhelmed and shut down. Without functioning kidneys you die.
{ Andy Warhol, Daisy Waterfall (Rain Machine), 1970-1971 | large shower of water in front of a wall of 3-D lenticular prints of daisies | Warhol made 3 versions of Daisy Waterfall for the Osaka World’s Fair in 1970 }
For obvious reasons, scientists long have thought that salt water couldn’t be burned. So when an Erie man announced he’d ignited salt water with the radio-frequency generator he’d invented, some thought it a was a hoax.
John Kanzius, a Washington County native, tried to desalinate seawater with a generator he developed to treat cancer, and it caused a flash in the test tube. Within days, he had the salt water in the test tube burning like a candle, as long as it was exposed to radio frequencies.
His discovery has spawned scientific interest in using the world’s most abundant substance as clean fuel, among other uses.
Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, held a demonstration last week at the university’s Materials Research Laboratory in State College, to confirm what he’d witnessed weeks before in an Erie lab. “It’s true, it works,” Dr. Roy said. “Mr. Kanzius’ discovery represents the most remarkable in water science in 100 years.”
{ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | Continue reading }
Oh my lord. How does this stuff make its way across the internet at such lightning speeds! I first saw this guy burning salt water months ago and disregarded it as not-very-interesting science. But now I have to go to the trouble of actually explaining this…not to you, my thankfully-intelligent reader, but to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Yahoo!, Engadget and oh-so-many others.
John Kanzius shoots radio waves at salt water, and then lights it on fire. This is a fairly impressive display, I mean, we don’t think about water as being flammable. But I’m having a really hard time believing that it’s energy positive, particularly because it would break the laws of physics. The radio waves simply loosen the bonds between the hydrogen and oxygen and allow them to be easily broken when exposed to heat.
That’s all wonderful, and it seems like it’s producing energy, except that the radio frequency generator he’s using consumes several times more energy than the flame on the other end produces.
photo { Bill Owens, Suburbia, 1973 }
The seas are made up of 96.5 percent pure water. The remaining 3.5 percent is made up of 75 other elements. Six elements are responsible for 99 percent of the sea’s saltiness. They are: chloride, sodium, sulfur, magnesium, calcium, and potassium. Most of the saltiness comes from the compound sodium chloride (aka table salt).
The ocean is salty because of the gradual concentration of dissolved chemicals eroded from the Earth’s crust and washed into the sea. Solid and gaseous ejections from volcanoes, suspended particles swept to the ocean from the land by onshore winds, and materials dissolved from sediments deposited on the ocean floor have also contributed. Salinity is increased by evaporation or by freezing of sea ice and it is decreased as a result of rainfall, runoff, or the melting of ice.
Some scientists estimate that the oceans contain as much as 50 quadrillion tons (50 million billion tons) of dissolved solids. If the salt in the sea could be removed and spread evenly over the Earth’s land surface it would form a layer more than 500 feet thick, about the height of a 40-story office building.
What arouses the scientist’s curiosity is not so much why the ocean is salty, but why it isn’t fresh like the rivers and streams that empty into it. And how does one explain ocean water’s remarkably uniform chemical composition? To these and related questions, scientists seek answers with full awareness that little about the oceans is understood.
Scientists have studied the ocean’s water for more than a century, but they still do not have a complete understanding of its chemical composition. This is partly due to the lack of precise methods and procedures for measuring the constituents in sea water. Some of the problems confronting scientists stem from the enormous size of the oceans, which cover about 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, and the complex chemical system inherent in a marine environment in which constituents of sea water have intermingled over vast periods of time. (…)
Oceanographers report salinity (total salt content) and the concentrations of individual chemical constituents in sea water — chloride, sodium, or magnesium for example — in parts per thousand, for which the symbol o/oo is used. That is, a salinity of 35 o/oo means 35 pounds of salt per 1,000 pounds of sea water. The saltiest water (40 o/oo ) occurs in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, where rates of evaporation are very high. (…)
photo { Ben Grieme }
Despite the 95-degree heat this week, Elsie Wenger has shut off her evaporative cooler, stopped flushing her toilets and forgone showers.
Wenger, 86, and others who live in remote high desert patches started saving water in a panic Friday after state health officials and the California Highway Patrol impounded several water trucks that supplied these far-flung homesteads with the precious resource.
Authorities said the trucks were delivering non-potable water. But some customers said they didn’t mind — the water was cheap.
“There’s nothing wrong with the water. We got it tested years ago and it’s good, clean water,” Wenger said, her voice shaking. “All of us who live out of town depend on these water trucks. I don’t know what to do.”
The California Department of Public Health stopped three water trucks during a three-day sting, issuing three citations for unlicensed and unsanitary vehicles.
Two of the trucks were impounded by CHP officers because their operators didn’t have drivers’ licenses or permits. The third was cited for mechanical problems and ordered out of service, said CHP Sgt. Jim Fonseca.
As news of the sting spread Friday, water deliveries across eight desert communities were halted.
Mary Lou Huffman, 50, of Lucerne Valley said it was no secret that most trucks delivered non-potable water. She uses the delivered water for her evaporative cooler, showers, toilets and laundry.”We buy our drinking water,” she said. Sharon Edwards of L&S Water Delivery in Johnson Valley even asks her clients to sign a waiver acknowledging that they’re receiving non-potable water.
photo { Afflicted Yard }
On the streets of New York or Denver or San Mateo this summer, it seems the telltale cap of a water bottle is sticking out of every other satchel. Americans are increasingly thirsty for what is billed as the healthiest, and often most expensive, water on the grocery shelf. But this country has some of the best public water supplies in the world. Instead of consuming four billion gallons of water a year in individual-sized bottles, we need to start thinking about what all those bottles are doing to the planet’s health.
Here are the hard, dry facts: Yes, drinking water is a good thing, far better than buying soft drinks, or liquid candy, as nutritionists like to call it. And almost all municipal water in America is so good that nobody needs to import a single bottle from Italy or France or the Fiji Islands. Meanwhile, if you choose to get your recommended eight glasses a day from bottled water, you could spend up to $1,400 annually. The same amount of tap water would cost about 49 cents.
Next, there’s the environment. Water bottles, like other containers, are made from natural gas and petroleum. The Earth Policy Institute in Washington has estimated that it takes about 1.5 million barrels of oil to make the water bottles Americans use each year. That could fuel 100,000 cars a year instead. And, only about 23 percent of those bottles are recycled, in part because water bottles are often not included in local redemption plans that accept beer and soda cans.
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The use of any one cleaning product—green or conventional—in small amounts and with proper ventilation probably won’t make you ill, says Tom Natan, a chemical engineer with the non-profit National Environmental Trust.
The problem is that most people use more than one cleaning product for the bathroom—there is one for the toilet, one for the mirror, perhaps one for surfaces, another to clean mildew from tiles and then tons of other “specialized” cleaning product options. The repeated exposures to the chemicals in all of these products can add up, Natan said.
“We are exposed, in the process of cleaning our homes, to more than the manufacturers projected,” Natan said. And that’s just the story for humans. Factor in the overall planet’s health, and it gets murkier.
Certain chemicals commonly found in conventional cleaning products present known or suspected problems for the people that use them and the environment once washed down the drain.
Phosphates can cause the eutrophication of rivers and other bodies of water, which can deplete them of oxygen and decrease water quality.
Lightning struck twice at a water plant that serves more about 800,000 people, leaving some with little or no running water Saturday, authorities said.
United Water New Jersey told residents in most of Bergen County and part of Hudson County to boil water before consuming it and ordered them not to use any water for nonessential purposes.
“No water use outdoors today. And we understand that’s a little bit of a hardship because it’s going to be another 90-degree smoldering day. But no lawn watering. No car washing,'’ United Water New Jersey spokesman Rich Henning said.
Lighting hit the plant Friday night, and a second strike around midnight cut power to the plant, located in Haworth, and hobbled the backup generators, according to the Harrington Park-based utility.
Electrical crews were working to restore power to the plant, but it was not clear how long that work would take. The areas affected were just to the northeast of Manhattan.
photo { T-Shirt Watch }
