Liquid water isn’t just important to us; it is mostly what we are physically. Common stuff: Two hydrogen atoms linked to an oxygen atom in a bond that breaks up and reforms about a million times each second. That’s why the stuff is a “liquid.” And maybe, just because we’re mostly composed of it, that’s why change is a characteristic of our lives.
Temperature, you learned in science class, is a measure of atomic and molecular motion. Faster vibrating molecules yield higher temperatures; slower vibrations, lower temperatures. And you learned from experience that water has other phases. Liquid water slows down its breakup and reformation as it cools, becoming ice crystals, solids with more stability and maybe only once-a-second breakup and reformation. As water speeds up its vibrational movements by acquiring more energy, molecules separate in a more excited state to become water vapor, that unseen gas that plagues our comfort on hot, humid days.
We lie in that balance between solid and gas. Fickle humans don’t relish a solid life; for them breakup and reformation is the norm, and in the short-lived extreme, they live in the rapid vibrational excess of a gaseous state. More sedate people, in contrast, cherish a less hectic, less frenetic, and less vicissitudinous lifestyle. They aren’t quite solid, but they seem to prefer less liquidity, practicing in their lives a seemingly secure and solid state.
Now, isn’t it surprising that researchers have discovered that liquid water has two states itself?* Apparently, halfway between freezing and boiling (on average) water shifts its character slightly. No, you can stare at water of 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), but you won’t see this transition. Nothing you look at on the macro level reveals this change. Hidden from our eyes is a crossover point, where water begins to change its character.
That liquid water has an invisible crossover point where its nature changes shouldn’t surprise us. There are transitions in every life, even in lives we perceive to be steady or sedate. Moving a life toward either crystallized solidity or gaseous instability is always a matter of crossing over that transition point. And that applies not only to general lifestyle, but also to our thinking.
Are your thoughts still liquid, still fluid, and if they are, on what side of the transition point do they lie? Are they moving toward freezing or boiling? Is your intellectual stance frozen, crystallized into a set of unquestionable axioms? Or, have you moved toward such fluidity that nothing seems to be stable? Is all a vibrational frenzy?
* http://www.sci-news.com/physics/two-states-liquid-water-04359.html L.M. Maestro et al. 2016. On the existence of two states in liquid water: impact on biological and nanoscopic systems. International Journal of Nanotechnology13: 8-9; doi: 10.1504/IJNT.2016.079670
Temperature, you learned in science class, is a measure of atomic and molecular motion. Faster vibrating molecules yield higher temperatures; slower vibrations, lower temperatures. And you learned from experience that water has other phases. Liquid water slows down its breakup and reformation as it cools, becoming ice crystals, solids with more stability and maybe only once-a-second breakup and reformation. As water speeds up its vibrational movements by acquiring more energy, molecules separate in a more excited state to become water vapor, that unseen gas that plagues our comfort on hot, humid days.
We lie in that balance between solid and gas. Fickle humans don’t relish a solid life; for them breakup and reformation is the norm, and in the short-lived extreme, they live in the rapid vibrational excess of a gaseous state. More sedate people, in contrast, cherish a less hectic, less frenetic, and less vicissitudinous lifestyle. They aren’t quite solid, but they seem to prefer less liquidity, practicing in their lives a seemingly secure and solid state.
Now, isn’t it surprising that researchers have discovered that liquid water has two states itself?* Apparently, halfway between freezing and boiling (on average) water shifts its character slightly. No, you can stare at water of 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), but you won’t see this transition. Nothing you look at on the macro level reveals this change. Hidden from our eyes is a crossover point, where water begins to change its character.
That liquid water has an invisible crossover point where its nature changes shouldn’t surprise us. There are transitions in every life, even in lives we perceive to be steady or sedate. Moving a life toward either crystallized solidity or gaseous instability is always a matter of crossing over that transition point. And that applies not only to general lifestyle, but also to our thinking.
Are your thoughts still liquid, still fluid, and if they are, on what side of the transition point do they lie? Are they moving toward freezing or boiling? Is your intellectual stance frozen, crystallized into a set of unquestionable axioms? Or, have you moved toward such fluidity that nothing seems to be stable? Is all a vibrational frenzy?
* http://www.sci-news.com/physics/two-states-liquid-water-04359.html L.M. Maestro et al. 2016. On the existence of two states in liquid water: impact on biological and nanoscopic systems. International Journal of Nanotechnology13: 8-9; doi: 10.1504/IJNT.2016.079670
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