Water, the marvellous and divine gift of nature, is absolutely necessary for sustenance of plant and animal lives on earth. Scientifically, water is necessary for life to originate.
Great religions too say life originates in water only. About 70 percent of the earth is water and in animal and plant bodies water is the major constituent.
The human body is almost 70 percent water! This universal solvent has the capacity to dissolve many solid materials by solvation and can ordinarily exist in three different phases for service to man in agriculture, art, industry, transportation, food processing etc.
Ice is solid water and when it is warmed, it melts to form liquid water which in turn on supplying with more heat energy, water vapour is formed.
Steam is water vapour with higher energy content. When it rains on a cold cloudy day, one feels warmth in the environment as the stored heat energy in water vapoor of the clouds is released to the atmosphere!
Water plasma, the fourth phase of water, is formed at temperatures above 3300 degree celsius and it is probably the best source of energy for recycling anything without causing environmental pollution.
Water plasma can disintegrate even the CFC gases which destroy the ozone layer as it contains very reactive entities such as hydrogen, oxygen and hydroxyl radicals.
Now what is water all about? It is a chemical consisting of many water (H2O) molecules. In each water molecule, two hydrogen atoms are linked to an oxygen atom. The H-O-H link has a slight bend and is not straight. As a result, water molecule assumes polarity.
Also the hydrogen atoms of one water molecule are attracted to the oxygen atoms of other water molecules and the process is repeated so as to establish links among water molecules. These links are known as hydrogen bonds which help water to remain as a liquid from the melting point of ice up to the boiling point. It is interesting to compare H2O molecule with a hydrogen sulphide ( H2S) molecule.
Even though sulphur is twice as heavy as oxygen, H2S is a gas even at temperatures near minus( -)600C. There are no intermolecular hydrogen bonding in H2S! Here lies the wonder and magic of the chemistry of water.
One may also wonder as to how water was born? The birth of water is from fire! The combustion of hydrogen in oxygen produces water. So there is ‘fire’ in water too.
Water is precious. Every cell in plant and animal bodies require water. Since it is available in plenty people take it for granted and lavishly use and misuse it.
In the grand old days of the dawn of human progress, civilizations flourished only along the banks of the mighty rivers like the Ganga, Sindhu, Nile, Tigris etc. simply because of the benevolent support water can give to man to grow rice and other foodgrain varieties for supporting life.
In India people even worshiped water sources like the Ganga, Sindhu etc. with great respect. However, as time passed by, the evergrowing greed of man in agriculture and industry polluted all the rivers by misuse to such an extent as to jeopardize even the very existence of life on this planet. There is a big threat to plant and animal life on this planet now due to water pollution. The only remedy now to save life on this planet is to bring back our ancient culture of love and respect to sources of water especially the rivers.
Strong measures on the part of the government is absolutely necessary to protect rivers from pollution and exploitation. However, a permanent solution to the problem can be achieved only by educating people of this land from their early childhood to love and respect our rivers.
(The writer is former professor of chemistry, Calicut University. The views in the article are the writer’s own. Phone: 9847444531. email: [email protected] )
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