Elemental // Water: A Photo Essay
Life at the Triple Point
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.
~Loren Eisely
Friends—
Many of you know I’m obsessed with water. I’ve always been obsessed with water.
Water is magic. She’s the stuff of life. There’s so much to be said—a lifetime of words and experiences to share—but today I’m focusing on a couple truly amazing physical characteristics of water, characteristics that have laid the foundation for life on Earth. To start, water on Earth exists in three phases: solid, liquid, gas.
Magic Magic
First for the magic magic, that which can only be experienced rather than explained:
SOLID
Crystalline. Softened. Silent.
LIQUID
Fluid. Enveloping. Sensuous.
GAS
Ethereal. Mutable. Mysterious.
Practical Magic
Now for the practical magic, the organizing principles provided by science:
One: Water is the only compound on Earth with a triple point (the temperature and pressure at which all three phases of matter—solid, liquid, gas—exist simultaneously) corresponding to the Earth’s ambient temperatures and pressures, and thus, the only compound found simultaneously in three phases (solid ice, liquid water, and gaseous vapor).
Two: Water is the only naturally-occurring compound for which the solid phase (ice) is less dense than its liquid phase (liquid water). As water freezes, it organizes into an hexagonal lattice structure that has greater spacing between molecules than does liquid water (i.e., as it freezes, water expands, making it less dense.) Hence, the floating.
Why is this important?
Because Earth’s temperature and pressure conditions approximate the triple point of water, liquid water exists. Liquid water is a prerequisite to life.
The presence of three phases enables weather and climate: water evaporates from liquid to vapor, forming clouds, and from there condenses into precipitation and falls back to earth, freezes into solid phase ice and snow, and again melts to water or sublimes to vapor—all in an endless cycle that moves water around the planet.
If ice were more dense than water, our lakes and ponds would freeze from the bottom up. Surface water would freeze to ice, sink to the bottom, and freeze into a solid ice column. Aquatic life would not survive.
The alternative? We’d be living on a planet that resembles Mars or Venus. Actually, we wouldn’t be here at all.
What’s your most magical memory of water—in any form? I’d love to hear it
To residing in the magic magic.
xo Wendy
Magic magic indeed, and such a lyrical way to illustrate the amazing properties of the Mickey-Mouse molecule that is water (plus the gift of your photos)! Thank you, Wendy. I am thinking about water's surface tension too, and how miraculous it is that a coast redwood tree can open the pores in its needles on the topmost branches and let the energy in sunlight evaporate water from within those needles in order to use that surface tension to pull a thin column of water all the way from the tree's roots, 200 or more feet below. Such wonders this watery planet creates!
The first time I went diving at Cane Bay in St. Croix, floated through coral grottoes and dropped over the wall into pure blue. Time stopped.