Third year simulation experiment/Properties of Water

This is the eighth section (and extension) of the third year simulation experiment. You can return to the previous page, | Third year simulation experiment/Dynamical properties and the diffusion coefficient, or go back to the Introduction.

Water is something that we all feel very close to; Steven Rose in his great book (and great read!) "The Chemistry of Life" describes water as the origin of life. However, for something so crucial to our survival, water is something that's very difficult to understand. Take for example a sunny day - you're sitting under an umbrella in that beach café and you order a coca-cola with ice and lemon. The ice floats and we don't think twice about it - but the solid (and supposedly more dense version!) is floating on the same liquid. It has an extraordinarily large surface tension such that pond skaters fly from place to place on the surface with little effort. Water is an incredibly good polar solvent and has a fantastically large dielectric constant. It also has a high vapour pressure resulting in it being a devil to separate on the rotavap.