A biography of water

  • The brilliantly told and gripping
  • Book overview. The extent to

    • H2O: A Biography of Water by Philip Ball

    In the Old Testament, the God of the Hebrews hovers over the primeval waters and brings forth the world from the infinite ocean. It is a motif echoed in creation myths throughout the world. In each, water is the fundamental precondition for life. Yet the extent to which water remains a scientific mystery is extraordinary, despite its prevalence and central importance on Earth. Whether one considers its role in biology, its place in the physical world (where it refuses to obey the usual rules of liquids) or its deceptively simple chemistry, there is still no complete answer to the question: what is water?

    This book explains what, exactly, we do and do not know about the strange character of this most essential and ubiquitous of substances.

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    H2O transports its readers back to the Big Bang and the formation of galaxies to witness the birth of water&#;s constituent elements: hydrogen and oxygen. These two elements spread through unimaginable expanses of space before combining to form seas and rivers, clouds and snowflakes, cosmic ice, the cytoplasm of cells and the matrix of life itself. The book explains how the world&#;s oceans were formed four billion years ago; where water is to be found on other planets; why ice floats when most solids sink; why, despite being highly corrosive, water is good for us; why there are at least fifteen kinds of ice and perhaps two kinds of liquid water; how scientists have consistently misunderstood water for centuries; and why wars have been waged over it.

    This gloriously offbeat and intelligent book conducts us on a journey through the history of science, folklore, the wilder scientific fringes, cutting-edge chemistry, physics, cell biology and ecology, to give a fascinating new perspective on life and the substance that sustains it.

    Weidenfeld & Nicolson
    Hard Back pages (Sept )
    ISBN

    &#;In a tour de force of scientific exposition, Philip Ball ranges from the c

  • This book explains what, exactly, we

    • Life's Matrix: A Biography of Water

    July 31,
    Damos por sentado muchas cosas, la luz del sol, el aire, la noche y el día, las fases de la luna, o las estaciones, muchas veces ni siquiera las comprendemos por completo, pero es un hecho que están ahí, que van a estar ahí mientras dure nuestra corta vida; una de esas tantas cosas es el agua, el líquido elemento, la matriz de la vida.
    La mayor parte de nosotros sabemos poco mas que tiene tres estados, que esta conformada por dos átomos de hidrogeno y uno de oxígeno, que es parte de un ciclo eterno, y que todos los seres vivos de este planeta la necesitan para subsistir en mayor o menor medida. Lo cierto es que aunque nos maravillamos por la belleza de los copos de nieve y extraviamos la mirada en el horizonte de las playas sin nombre, comprendemos muy superficialmente su naturaleza.
    Precisamente por estas continuas reflexiones, un día particularmente lluvioso empecé este libro, que va solo y únicamente del agua, desde sus posibles orígenes allá en lo profundo del universo, hasta últimos los descubrimientos y timos científicos que ha habido últimamente.
    No les voy a mentir, el libro es árido, (sé que el termino resulta contrario al tema, pero es lo que hay) muy árido, esta dividido en 4 partes, el agua vista desde el punto de vista físico, químico, biológico y los últimos avances en materia de investigación del fluido. A mí, me gustaron mucho las dos primeras partes, porque explica clarísimo como el agua (aquí el termino esta mas que mejor empleado) influye en el planeta y en el sistema solar, además de aclarar conceptos a nivel subatómico, enlaces, explicación de propiedades, etc. Pero la tercera parte va acerca de como el agua afecta a la vida, y su comportamiento a nivel celular, lo cual me resulta más difícil de comprender porque la biología y la bioquímica se me hacen muy cuesta arriba y no fluyo…
    En fin, que el libro me ha parecido super útil e interesante, he comprendido muchísimas cosas y ha hecho que

    Boccaletti, G. Water: A biography. Penguin Random House. ISBN (hardback) p. $

    (URL: )

    Elliot Rooney

    UKRI–GCRF Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub, Newcastle University, United Kingdom; 2@

     

    To cite this review: Rooney, E.  Review of “Water: A Biography”, Penguin Random House, , by GuilioBoccaletti, Water Alternatives,

     

    Authors have long been tempted to attempt to write histories of everything (recently, e.g., Harari ; Rutherford ; Graeber & Wengrow ). The analytical value of such an exercise risks being compromised by the sheer breadth of material covered in descriptive terms to be able to lay the groundwork for explanation, and this book certainly exemplifies the consequences of not being attuned to such a risk. Boccaletti takes readers through Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and other periods of classical antiquity, with loose connection to those elements of their history that intertwined with watery narratives. The story then moves through medieval Europe into the European colonial project. Finally, we are presented with a picture of the past half-century of world history as dictated by US and Chinese foreign policy. The book is lacking in representing the agency of everyday people in shaping the ways in which they relate to water whilst filled with unending hyperbole and reductive representations of more or less anywhere but Western Europe.

    The principal frustration of the book is best revealed thus: “Because water played a fundamental role in the medieval economy it was inevitable that jurisprudence would focus on it” (p. 91). The trouble with inevitability is that it doesn’t give much room for analytical insight. What results in an obtuse analytical tool with which to try to understand society.

    One connecting sinew, however, is what seems to be an effort to find trace elements of the market normativity so pervasive in contemporary approaches to water management. The author asserts that “the nat

  • In Life's Matrix, Philip Ball writes

    • H2O: A Biography of Water

    The brilliantly told and gripping story of the most familiar - yet, amazingly, still poorly understood - substance in the universe: Water.

    The extent to which water remains a scientific mystery is extraordinary, despite its prevalence and central importance on Earth. Whether one considers its role in biology, its place in the physical world (where it refuses to obey the usual rules of liquids) or its deceptively simple structure, there is still no complete answer to the question: what is water? Philip Ball's book explains what, exactly, we do and do not know about the strange character of this most essential and ubiquitous of substances.

    H20 begins by transporting its readers back to the Big Bang and the formation of galaxies to witness the birth of water's constituent elements: hydrogen and oxygen. It then explains how the primeval oceans were formed four billion years ago; where water is to be found on other planets; why ice floats when most solids sink; why, despite being highly corrosive, water is good for us; why there are at least fifteen kinds of ice and perhaps two kinds of liquid water; how scientists have consistently misunderstood water for centuries; and why wars have been waged over it.

    Philip Ball's gloriously offbeat and intelligent book conducts us on a journey through the history of science, folklore, the wilder scientific fringes, cutting-edge physics, biology and ecology, to give a fascinating new perspective on life and the substance that sustains it. After reading this book, drinking a glass of water will never be the same again.