Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 29 January 1999:
Vol. 283. no. 5402, pp. 614 - 615
DOI: 10.1126/science.283.5402.614
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

News of the Week

CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS:
Getting to the Bottom of Water

Alexander Hellemans

In 1935, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling suggested that the standard picture of electrostatic attractions--so-called hydrogen bonds--joining water molecules in water and ice may not be complete. He proposed that the influence of the strong "covalent" bonds within each water molecule leaks into the hydrogen bonds and lends a hand in binding one molecule to the next. More recently, quantum theory supported Pauling's view, and now researchers have probed the bonds in ice with intense x-rays and found that he was right. The result, reported in the 18 January issue of Physical Review Letters, will allow researchers to refine their models of water and ice assuming that the bonds between molecules are part covalent and part electrostatic.

Read the Full Text

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)