Resolving water's electrical properties
Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - 12:01
in Earth & Climate
An old confusion about the electrical properties of water's surface has ended, thanks to scientists at Pacific Northwest and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. The conflict arose because two types of measurements gave two radically different interpretations of what was happening at the surface of water. The team showed, through careful analysis, that the measurements weren't wrong, but rather the behavior of water's electrons influenced one measurement more than the other. The team's results provided a consistent interpretation of the different measurements and grace The Journal of Physical Chemistry B cover.