What could be better than a tall glass of ice water on a hot summer day? You fill your glass
with the clinking cubes and then turn on the faucet. As the water streams into the glass, the
ice somewhat dissolves, but what's left of the ice floats on top. This is because ice has a
lower density than water. This week's CSI, the world's smallest piece of ice, was created by
scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who are studying how water
behaves at the molecular level.
Since there are about 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 water molecules in a single drop, observing just a few is no easy feat. Using a liquid helium method, researchers were able to "grow" this piece of ice very slowly, forcing it to form the flat, hexagonal structure you see here (the red and white "ring"). This is how ice looks in nature. Until now, scientists have had a difficult time getting H2O to hook up in this way.
Why all this effort to understand water and ice? Our understanding of biochemistry depends a great deal on understanding hydrogen bonds. Pharmaceutical companies use this knowledge for drug development and testing via computer simulation. Ice is nice in your glass…and the lab. Cheers!
Image courtesy News Services--University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
