The Amazing Threes of Water

Water should truly be considered one of the greatest wonders of our planet if not the greatest wonder of all. When you delve into all of the amazing things that water is, it will confound everything you have ever thought about science and nature. Many years ago it was considered that someday water would be the power source of the future. That day is here and now.

Throughout history water has served man like no other substance on this planet. It is essential to our very existence. We cannot survive without water. Not only do we need it for direct nourishment, but everything that grows, virtually everything we eat, needs water. Maybe that’s why, in the great scheme of things, water covers 2/3 of the surface area of the planet.

Water also has a long history of providing power for our everyday use. Water can deliver enormous amounts of mechanical energy under the right circumstances. In has been used to turn water wheels to grind grains into flour. It has been used to turn water turbines to produce electricity. It has been used to drill holes under extreme pressure.

Water, scientifically, is natures’ most perfect substance. It is comprised of three atoms. Two Hydrogen atoms and one Oxygen atom. Hence H₂O. It can exist in three states, liquid, solid and gas. As a liquid it is simply water. As a solid it is referred to as ice. As a gas it is referred to as steam. The liquid form is used for all of the things I have already stated and more. The other two forms, ice and steam, also have unique and special properties making water even more useful.

Ice is created when water is frozen or lowered in temperature to 32° or lower. Ice can be used to preserve foods for long periods of time. It can be used to cool beverages to make them more pleasing to drink. It can also be used to split rocks by trapping a small amount of water in a crack and then freezing it causing the created ice to expand and split the rock. It can produce enormous amounts of pressure. Ice as a solid substance is very hard and cold. It can even be dangerous, as an iceberg it can easily sink a ship. If the ice is cold enough you can get frostbite by simply touching it.

Steam is created when water is heated to 212° or higher. It can be very dangerous, even more so than ice. Superheated steam can cause severe burns almost instantly. It can be contained and used under pressure to produce enormous amounts of power. Old fashioned locomotives (trains) ran under steam power. Many of the old time large motors ran on steam. Steam engines existed long before gasoline or diesel engines. Ocean liners, trains, steam shovels, even early day power plants to produce electricity, some of which are still being used today, all ran on steam.

The most overlooked aspect of water is the most basic aspect of all. The basic structure of water, the three atoms that make it what it is, all burn when exposed to a flame or spark. What? Water puts out fires. But Hydrogen burns, Oxygen burns. Actually Oxygen is what causes things to burn, for without Oxygen nothing would burn.

So then how do we make water burn? Well heating it only makes steam which is useful in its’ own right but not what we are after. We must separate the atoms into their basic forms, 2 Hydrogen atoms and 1 Oxygen atom. The technology for this was discovered a long time ago. It is often stated that it is simply too costly of a process to do economically and achieve a usable amount of “gas” with which you could “power a device” like an internal combustion engine. That’s what they say.

The process involved is similar to “electrolysis” but not quite the same. Electrolysis is the process of “electroplating” and has been around since the time of the ancient Egyptians or maybe even longer. The ancients had knowledge of batteries in order to do electroplating. There is evidence of electroplating from artifacts that have been discovered that were electroplated, and there is evidence of batteries. Both in Egypt and in South and Central America.

The process that makes a lead acid battery work is electrolysis. That’s one reason why they have a terminal life span of just a few years. Wait a minute? The process of electrolysis is what makes a battery work? And you use a battery to perform electroplating? Confused yet? A battery uses two metal plates (or more) submersed in an electrolyte that cause a charge to be transmitted from one plate of the battery to the other through the electrolyte. This action actually removes metal from one plate and deposits it on the opposite plate. In electroplating you connect the battery leads to two dissimilar metals and place them into a vat filled with an electrolyte material and one of the metals gets deposited onto the other metal. So much for electrolysis and electroplating, which isn’t what we want to do anyway. All of this uses DC or direct current electricity as is supplied from a battery. By the way ever notice that warning label on the battery in your car? It says it can produce explosive gases. That would be hydrogen.

We are going to use AC current and our setup is going to be a little different. Here we go again with the amazing properties of water. In the world of electricity water again has some unique properties. It has resistance, it is an electrolyte, and it is a dialectric, again in threes. Here is where it is going to get really interesting.

The resistance of water will vary slightly from place to place. My “well water” which has been filtered has a resistance of about 1400 Ohms. As an electrolyte you can “recharge” your car battery by adding some “distilled water” (purified) and putting it on a battery charger or simply let it sit for a few hours to build up a charge. As a dialectric its’ value will also vary according to its’ purity. It is this use as a dialectric that we are going to learn more about. The “dialectric constant” of air is 1. The dialectric constant of distilled water is 34 to 78.

So why are we learning about dialectric constants? In the world of electronics a “capacitor” is very similar to a battery. A simple capacitor is two metal plates separated by a “dialectric”. Again as with a battery a capacitor can have more than two plates. This changes the value of capacitance as a battery will change voltage with more plates. To change the value of the capacitor you can increase/decrease the size of the plates, the number of plates, the dialectric material type and/or thickness of the dialectric. All these things change the capacitors value and its’ “storage potential”. As an electronic device a capacitor also has a “resonant frequency” which is based upon its’ capacitive value or capacitance. The most important aspect of a capacitor is that it blocks DC and passes AC. This is why it works. Now we can refine it to make it work better.