Science In Real Life

It is time to take Science In Real Life back to its roots. What I am going to do with this essay, what I have been aiming at all along, is to show you a glimpse of the Universe through my eyes. Through the eyes of someone who has spent years studying that which cannot be seen, heard, or smelled directly, but which must be studied indirectly, and studied for years if proper comprehension is to be obtained. Years of effort have given me a new layer of additional information accessible to me merely on examination of an otherwise familiar object. And that, dear readers, is what I am going to share with you today. Physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson once said, “We are all connected. To each other, biologically. To the Earth, chemically. To the rest of the Universe, atomically.” I tell you now that each and every one of those connections surrounds us in every moment. I tell you now that you can see all of that and so much more in a single ordinary glass of water. Come with me, and let’s explore.

Biologically

Go ahead and pour yourself a glass of water. Set it down on the table. Stare at it. You might think that it’s just water, but you might just as well convince yourself that a school building contains only students. Yes, the students comprise most of the volume, but it is the trace elements that really make the magic happen. From a biological perspective, the water in that glass is teeming with life. Exactly what life is in it will vary from region to region, but you can be assured that bacteria of all shapes and sizes are happily doing the Bavarian backstroke in your water. Most protozoa are rougly 100 times smaller than the human eye is capable of seeing (there are visible ones, but they are quite rare by comparison). Micro-organisms by the millions are inside just eight ounces of transparent fluid. If you were to drop a few pinches of sugar in and put it in the sunlight, you could create an ecosystem that would sustain itself for thousands of years.

Speaking of sugar, all kinds of organic molecules are in our drinking water. Where do they come from? Us, of course. We are dumping food waste by the metric shit-ton – pardon the expletive, but I mean it literally. Into our water supply via our waste systems goes a lot of wasted food, both of the digested and undigested variety. In addition to whatever you rinse down the drain or wash off your plates, some portion of the food you eat simply passes through you unscathed and ends up in, for example, Puget Sound, where researchers have measured seasonal variations in runoff sufficiently fine-tuned to, if one were feeling particularly Holmesian, deduce things about the American diet. Not only food, but prescription drugs as well, although so far not in concentrations to give you anything lasting more than four hours, if you know what I mean.

Chemically

The chemistry of water is amazingly complex for such a simple molecule. But before we get to that, there are more contaminants to deal with. Minerals like calcium, magnesium, and sodium are largely responsible for most collections of water being as electrically conductive as they are. Pure H20 all by itself is not a great conductor, but scatter a few ions through it and you suddenly don’t want to be in the pool when the thunderstorm hits. Which brings us to chlorine and flourine, two substances artifically added to keep the dangerous stuff from growing in the water. Behind all the biology, your glass of water is a chemical bonanza!

And then there’s the chemistry of water itself. H20 has some remarkable properties. For such a tiny molecule, it packs a punch of polarization. Known in some circles as the universal solvent, the electrical properties of a water molecule by itself translate en masse to a substance that is as adept at pulling things apart as your three year old nephew. Water can also act as either an acid or a base (chemists call it amphoteric), making it instrumental in many of the chemical reactions so very common on planet Earth. We humans, and indeed almost all life forms on this planet, are mostly water – for a planet whose surface is also mostly water, this indeed connects us inextricably and irreversibly with our home planet. It is remarkable just how thoroughly connected everything is to everything else, by interchanging chemicals, through one simple truth: water flows. Inside your water glass are molecules, H20 and otherwise, that have been all around the world and back again.

Atomically

Here is where I could go on for far too long about a myriad of properties of this incredible liquid: its relatively high heat capacity enabling ecological mediation, its hydrogen bonding enabling so many different molecular arrangements, its astounding surface tension – here, look at the surface of the water in your glass. You will see the water rise ever so slightly when it meets the glass, as though making a bid for freedom. That is surface tension at work. The water clings to the glass and simply does not let go. Insects have evolved to take advantage of this; by being sufficiently light they are able to walk across as easily as we cross a room. Capillary action is a consequence of this. The stick-to-it-iveness of water enables 200 meter tall redwoods to siphon it up thin cellulose tubes to the highest leaves and branches.

But this is not the aspect of water that really connects us to the Universe. It is that the atoms of water, for all their extraordinary properties, are made of three very ordinary things: electrons, protons, and neutrons. They are governed by the same laws of gravity and electromagnetism and quantum mechanics that hold sway across the uncounted reaches of all of space and all of time. Everything that has ever been has helped to shape the Universe that you occupy, and you continue to shape the Universe as you live. An entire cosmos has led up to your glass of water, and an entire cosmos leads away from it.