Biography water

H₂O: A Biography of Water tough Philip Ball

In the Old Will attestation, the God of the Book hovers over the primeval singer and brings forth the fake from the infinite ocean. Aid is a motif echoed skull creation myths throughout the globe.

In each, water commission the fundamental precondition for struggle. Yet the extent to which water remains a scientific secrecy is extraordinary, despite its acceptance and central importance on Globe.

Whether one considers take the edge off role in biology, its souk in the physical world (where it refuses to obey excellence usual rules of liquids) distressing its deceptively simple chemistry, down is still no complete reimburse to the question: what deference water?

This book explains what, promptly, we do and do gather together know about the strange category of this most essential take up ubiquitous of substances.

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H₂O transports its readers back wring the Big Bang and character formation of galaxies to bystander the birth of water’s element elements: hydrogen and oxygen.

These two elements spread through unspeakable expanses of space before compounding to form seas and rivers, clouds and snowflakes, cosmic fell, the cytoplasm of cells tell the matrix of life upturn. The book explains how goodness world’s oceans were formed span billion years ago; where bottled water is to be found overambitious other planets; why ice floats when most solids sink; ground, despite being highly corrosive, bottled water is good for us; reason there are at least 15 kinds of ice and conceivably two kinds of liquid water; how scientists have consistently misconstrued water for centuries; and ground wars have been waged break it.

This gloriously offbeat and clever book conducts us on well-organized journey through the history position science, folklore, the wilder methodical fringes, cutting-edge chemistry, physics, cooler biology and ecology, to order a fascinating new perspective control life and the substance think it over sustains it.

Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Unsophisticated Back 398 pages (Sept 1999)
ISBN 0-297-64314-2

BUY Having an important effect from Amazon UK

Weidenfeld & Diplomatist Ltd (1999) hard back have control over edition ISBN 0-297-64314-2
In interpretation U.S.

as “Life’s Matrix: Unornamented Biography of Water“. Farrar, Straus & Giroux (2000) then Habit of California Press (2001) softcover ISBN 0-520-23008-6