Anders Nilsson
Stanford University, USA
Date
11 March 2009
Host
Jürg Osterwalder
Title
X-Rays Shines Light on the Mystery of Water
Abstract
Water is the key compound for our existence on this planet and it is involved in many important physical, chemical, biological and geological processes. Although water is the most common molecular substance it is also the most unusual with many anomalies in its thermodynamic properties such as compressibility, density variation and heat capacity. The question of the structure of the hydrogen bonding network in water has been discussed intensively for over 100 years and has not yet been resolved. This talk will describe recent x-ray spectroscopy and scattering measurements showing that the liquid is inhomogeneous with a dynamical equilibrium between two types of local structures driven by incommensurate requirements for minimizing enthalpy and maximizing entropy.