For all those that say that science is coming up with answers to questions is mistaken. Science is coming up with more and more questions than answers these days. It is in the way science is executed, by observation. The more we observe the world around us, the more we question. Let’s take water for an example.
We have come a long way with technology of water but we don’t even fully understand the basic structure of H2O. Richard Saykally of Berkeley said, “The structure of water is a major question in chemistry and physics.” And for forty years science has been divided into two groups, the continuum model peeps or C-side and the Two-State model or T-State Homies. Each group believed that this was how the atoms connected themselves together in a rain drop.
Water is a very complex substance. Comparable substances usually turn to gas and when water turns to solid it expands instead of contracting, which is due to the hydrogen atom. This is called the bond, the hydrogen bond. The thing is that the oxygen atom has more negative energy than the hydrogen and gives the hydrogen atom a positive pole, causing an attraction to other molecules. When two oxygen atoms touch a hydrogen, then they bond, hydrogen bond. This is the mystery. Why does ice float? Why is it that when something hits it at such a high rate of speed, it becomes solid? How does it trap heat so well?
"We show, using a combined experimental and theoretical approach, that many of the features of the Raman spectrum considered to be hallmarks of the two-state system actually result from a continuous distribution of intact hydrogen bonds," says Richard Saykally, from The Saykally Group.
English translation: T-State Homies, you got hosed. C-side is all up in that.
But this does not end the water debate. It only creates more questions. The stable broken hydrogen theory is wrong because in water the hydrogen are continually breaking up, getting back together and traveling. But the real question was never answered. Why?
Science is based on observation and with each answer, two more questions pop up. Will we ever answer them all? That may be the most important question of them all.
Friday, December 1, 2006
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