Water appears to have two different structures in its liquid state

The world as we know it wouldn't have existed without water, but compared to other liquids, water is very strange, and as it turns out now, it is even stranger than we thought. Japanese scientists have proven that water has two different molecular structures in its liquid state, one of which is tetrahedral structure and the other is not.

This discovery may have an impact on our knowledge of liquid water-based biological systems.

Water is found everywhere on Earth. Our planet is very humid compared to the rest of the planets in the solar system. We take a bath, drink it, and spend a lot of it here and there, especially in the summer. And all of life depends on him.

Water has a strange density property, as all liquids increase in density when they cool, and in their frozen state, they become denser than the liquid. In contrast to water, which reaches its maximum density at 4 ° C.
As the temperature drops below that, the density decreases, and at freezing point (0 ° C) it becomes less dense than liquid water, so the ice floats on the surface of the water.

Besides, the water has a high surface tension (second only to mercury). And it has very high melting and boiling points. The solubility of many chemicals in water is also a strange property.
 This means that each water molecule is hydrogen-bonded with 4 other molecules in a pyramid shape.
The structure of water is still under debate. One model proposes that the structure of water molecules is unimodal, as it is always tetrahedra, while another model proposes that the structure of water is bimodal, as it has two structures, only one of which is tetrahedrons.

To solve this dilemma, scientists from the University of Tokyo ran computer simulations as well as experiments with liquid silica, which is known to have tetrahedral molecular coordination as well.

These experiments relied on X-ray diffraction. And using the method of scattering atoms in liquid molecules by short wavelengths, in anticipating the coordination of these molecules.
They found that two of the overlapping peaks were hidden within what appeared to be the first deflection peak.
One of these peaks was consistent with the distance between oxygen atoms in a normal liquid. The other was consistent with longer distances between oxygen atoms than in the tetrahedral molecular coordination.
"We have shown the first clear evidence in the structure factor for the dynamic existence of two types of local structures, and this is supported by the description of the dichotomous water state," the researchers wrote in their paper.

These results could have applications in molecular biology, chemistry, and pharmaceuticals, as well as industrial applications.

Water has more than one type of molecule, how is that?

Scientists were finally able to separate them from each other!

You can't tell by looking, but a mug of water on your desk contains two different types of water molecules that spin subtly in different ways.

A recent scientific experiment was able to separate the two types, and discover that one of them is much better in reactions than the other, we do not expect this water (the best) to become a boom in the market, but the method behind this discovery is a blessing in itself for quantum chemistry.

Chemists from the University of Basel in Switzerland took a mixture of hydrogen monoxide particles and used electrostatic fields to sort them according to their total nuclear velocity.

Rotation is the quantum property that describes the direction of the angle with which particles can move. Different types of particles are classified according to the value of this property.

In one version of a water molecule referred to as an ortho-isomer, the combination of the two rotational motions of the particles that make up the atomic nucleus of the molecule adds a value of 1 to the total.

But there is another type called (Para-isomer of water) equal to the sum of the spin sum of its nuclear nucleus, which means - according to some basic principles that govern the movements of atoms in molecules - that such molecules must rotate differently from those found at Similar ones.

For most of the process, these cycles remain unchanged; Meaning that every molecule (par-isomer, or ortho-isomer) retains its identity.

The question is, do theoretical differences in spin make any significant difference in how the two different water molecules interact with other substances?

To find out, the researchers packed an ultra-cold crystal made of calcium ions with diazonium ions (N2H +), and then fired streams of the ortho-isomer and para-isomer into the core of the crystal, as they interacted with diazonium.

Calculating the number of N2H + ions remaining in the crystal after a given period gave researchers a good idea of ​​which reaction isomer is better than the other.

When recording the results, the researchers found that the way the para-isomers twisted and transformed worked 23% better upon reaction than the ortho isomer.

The analysis of the numbers through computer simulations confirmed the difference between the two types of molecules, as it was found that not all water molecules behave in the same way.

There is no doubt that there will be some companies ready to pounce on this discovery and market it as bottles of water superior to their peers, adding another fraud to the bottled water industry.

For most of us, water is just water, and drinking a glass of Para isomer water probably won't make any difference to your health.

But for chemists, water is just an odd thing, and knowing more about its reaction can make a big difference in how we study its properties.

Water may be just hydrogen and oxygen, but under different conditions, it behaves in several unusual ways, forming states of suspicion of a substance that we are just beginning to discover and understand.

Since life is currently defined as complex, water-soluble chemistry, knowing how substances dissolve and interact with water molecules is important for our detailed understanding of biology and its origins.

To put the weirdness of water aside, the results of the experiment also demonstrate our growing ability to model and test different quantum effects on whole molecules.

"The better we control the state of the molecules involved in a chemical reaction, the better we can understand and understand the basic mechanisms and dynamics of the reaction," says chemist Stefan Willich from the University of Basel in Switzerland.

Recently, the record for the most accurate chemical reaction in the world was broken, the brief reaction of one atom of sodium with one atom of cesium.

Understanding the quantum properties of molecules to control their interactions at such a high level is already a feat of the new frontiers of chemistry.