The Essence Of Life: Exploring The Critical Importance Of Water For All Living Beings

University of Harvard The Essence of Life Exploring the Critical Importance of Water for All Living Beings For many centuries, water was considered an element. In 1781, the English physicist H. Cavendish demonstrated that water is formed by the explosion of a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen with an electric spark. In 1783, Lavoisier repeated the experiment, achieving the first quantitative synthesis of water. It was then established that 2g of hydrogen combine with 16g of oxygen to produce 18g of water. In 1805, Humboldt and Gay-Lussac showed that water is composed of two volumes of hydrogen and one volume of oxygen. Natural water consists of a mixture of the oxygen isotopes 16O, 17O, and 18O, along with the three hydrogen isotopes 1H, 2H, and 3H. The combination of these generates 18 species of water molecules. Pure water always contains a mixture of light water (H2O) and extremely small amounts of heavy water (D2O) and hyper-heavy water (T2O). Natural State In nature, water is abundant in all states of matter - in liquid form (covering 2/3 of the Earths surface, as oceans, rivers, and underground water) - in solid form (forming ice caps) - in gaseous form (the atmosphere contains