A former coworker once told me she was pretty sure my organs were stuck to my insides. I had just proudly announced that it was nooooo problem for me to go the entire day without peeing because I really didn’t need to drink water. Man, how invincible I felt at 25 years old and how naive I was. “Me, drink water – that’s for middle aged people who walk with their 64 ounce bottles everywhere”
Fast forward about 16 years and though I still hate to drink water, I have become sorely reminded of my dependence on it…and my fascination of it.
Growing up, there really was no reason for me to love water – it didn’t taste as good as Kool-Aid (gotta love sugar), I didn’t swim (cuz virtually no one who grows up in Jamaica can), I couldn’t ice skate (I value my bones in one piece) and showers were over-rated (there was no water pressure in Jamaica so a shower was essentially standing under a trickle). I had good reason to hold it in disdain.
However, water became one of the main reasons I, as a young agnostic, needed to take a closer look at God. That – and belly buttons, but that is another blog in itself.
I had told a friend in college that the Bible was a bunch of Jewish fairy tales and that the human body was a masterpiece of evolution. I had never really researched it and couldn’t tell you why I believed it but I held very tightly to that belief because acknowledging God meant I needed to suddenly look at life and eternity in a way I really didn’t want to.
Yet, it was my very studies in Biology and Chemistry that made me start to ask questions – a lot of them.
I didn’t know that when my Chemistry professor started going on in his monotonous voice about the “anomalous expansion of water” that it would begin to lead me closer to God.
Let me back up in case I left you sputtering “ anama-what? anomo – who?”.
The anomalous expansion of water.
Science 101 – solids, liquids and gases. In general, the molecules in gases are far apart and it is the least dense of the three. Liquids are in the middle and solids are the most dense. A solid is more dense than when it is in its liquid state and will sink to the bottom of that liquid.
Pretty standard information. except when you come to water. It’s an anomaly. (see I didn’t make up that phrase – it makes sense because water does something no other non-metallic liquid does when it is turning into a solid).
It’s an anomaly – its behavior is just plain strange and abnormal. The only other substances that behave strangely like this are bismuth and antimony and no one really cares where in the periodic table they are!
See, when water gets colder it becomes more and more dense until it gets to 4°C. Unlike other liquids, instead of continuing to contract, it then starts to expand so that ice is actually less dense than liquid water! Scientists can’t completely explain why the hydrogen bonding in water causes it to behave that way.
“ Woop di doo”, you may think. Why is this interesting?
It’s interesting and absolutely vital because it would profoundly affect the survival of organisms living anywhere water freezes. Simply put, aquatic life would not survive the winter anywhere ice forms if water did not act in this…anomalous way!
Anomalous expansion of water – causes ice to float on top of water. It doesn’t sink to the bottom and kill the fish, and everything that survives under the ice in the winter.
As one writer puts it: If water did not have this strange property, the entire pond or lake would freeze solid and fish and other living creatures would be killed, since most animals would have their cells disrupted by the needlelike ice crystals that form in the water within their cells.
Anomalous expansion of water – ensures that the water below the ice is insulated from the colder temperatures above, providing a more livable temperature at the bottom of the body of water.
Anomalous expansion of water- pushes down oxygen in the water’s surface for use at lower depths for use by the aquatic animals and plants.
It’s a curious fact, this anomalous expansion of water. Taken for granted yet, quite significant. It’s like a whisper in the wind, a little wink from God to remind us of little things He has done for us.
It beckons us to come and look closer at the delightful things he has left in this world for us to discover Him.
And for one young woman to whom water had little significance, it certainly did.
Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse
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