Water

I really like water. I don't think about it *that* often but when I do, I stop and at marvel at it. There's the aesthetic pleasure - often enjoyed, here in the Lakes - of the rain, of course. Then there's the physical pleasure that I get from swimming: when I was young, I could happily spend hours playing in a swimming pool, these days I swim three times a week.

Considering that water must be the blandest thing there is to drink, NOTHING compares with the pleasure of a glass of cool water after a long, summer run. On those occasions, I wonder why I ever drink anything else.

And then there are its physical properties: it's surface tension, the fact that it's ridiculously hard to compress (which is why it's so good at eroding things like rock). But the property I like best, the one that I stop and think about sometimes, is the anomalous expansion of water.

When matter cools it contracts, gets smaller. As its weight doesn't change, this means it gets denser. Thus an element in its solid form will sink if it is placed in in its liquid form. But water is different: as you cool it, it contracts like anything else until it reaches four degrees centigrade, when it starts to expand again. And, as a result, ice floats on water, because it's less dense, instead of sinking.

In itself, this might seem only mildly interesting. But stop to think about life, especially when it was all water-based, before we evolved into landlubbers. When winter came, ice would form on the surface of the water, thereby insulating and protecting the life in the water below. It is this anomalous behaviour of water that allowed us to evolve!

To celebrate, but just this once, I might put a little water in my whisky, this evening :-)