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Tuesday 3 April 2012

Is it just me…….

or am I stupid? I know I wasn’t the best at chemistry at college, but it would seem that strange things can happen to a common, every day substance. Apparently it can change depending which part of the country you live in.

Water:

I always thought that this consisted  of H2 + O = H2O. Maybe not if this is to go by.

Dr Barnaby Smith of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology said: ‘There are issues to consider, as water has a different chemical composition in the North and the South which can affect the ecosystem.

Maybe I’m worse at chemistry than I thought.

8 comments:

  1. OH2, perhaps?

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  2. I'm guessing the fellow means the hardness -dissolved salts - which will affect slightly the agricultural requirements for fertilisers, etc.
    Being pedantic, steam is H2O, most water consists of clumped molecules, so behaves more like H10O5 or H16O8, etc. Some homoeopathic proponents suggest it's these clumps that might retain the so-called substance memory, despite the absurd dilutions, beloved of these sugar-pill pedlars.

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  3. "Maybe I’m worse at chemistry than I thought."

    On the contrary FE, as an Engineer, you're just better at understanding the meaning of written words, better than either the journalist or the Doctor expressed.

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  4. I did read somewhere that if we sent water from the North (say Keilder Water) to the south london the difference in hardness would mean having to add thousands of tonnes of salts to the water every week just to get the hardness even something like right. Having seem the amount of scale you get in boilers in the london area compared to the amount I used to get in Manchester (Lakeland Water), I can easily see this must be right.

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  5. Daedalus - it's the other way round.

    If they shipped (soft) Keilder water to London (hard water), it's save having to use softeners.

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  6. Joe Public,

    The point is that the water from Keilder is soft but many places in the South do not have softeners and are therefor not geared up to the sudden change in water quality. If I can find the article I was semi quoting I will post a link.

    Daedalus

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  7. In the south east we can only dream of soft water.

    *Drools*

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  8. otoh, hard water makes better beer.

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