Water is such a familiar attribute of our everyday life that it is probably difficult to find a person who, without having any professional reasons, thought about its physicochemical properties. But, if you have to talk about it in this context, then quite often you hear the thesis that this problem is of little interest due to the fact that everything was known and clarified to the level of axioms a long time ago. However, this is not at all true. The nature of the chemical compound known to us under the name water has not yet been studied enough to make it possible to claim that we know everything about it.
Indeed, water is all around us, but from the point of view of its physicochemical nature, it is very interesting that it is an almost universal solvent. This quality, in turn, is determined by a whole list of water properties, which make the solubility of the compound universal.
For example, everyone knows from school that with an increase in temperature from 0 C to + 4 C an increase in the density of the substance occurs, after which this indicator itself gradually begins to decrease. Such a peculiar change in the density parameters is explained by the structural features of water molecules and the nature of the interactions between them. Of interest is also such a process, during which the values of such parameters as the specific heat of water, density and thermal conductivity change in the same abrupt manner. An example is such a relationship. It was found that the specific heat of water is almost two times greater than the same figure for ice.
To explain this phenomenon, it should be recalled that, in fact, is the specific heat. For a better understanding, the term specific heat should be chosen as the subject of the definition . This is the value designated in physical formulas as “c”, which shows how much heat should be used up to provide a temperature increase of 1 kg of a substance (in this case, water) by one degree.
So, in water, the heat capacity index is abnormal not only based on its value. It has been experimentally proved that the specific heat of water has completely different values at different temperatures, and the nature of this dynamics is an unusual dependence. The heat capacity of water drops in its value only in the temperature range from 0 to 37 C. If, then, the temperature is increased, then the heat capacity will also increase.
In the course of numerous experiments, it was found that the smallest value of the specific heat of water is fixed at a temperature of 36.8 C. Reading these lines, does this association cause any associations? Of course! This is an indicator of the normal body temperature of not only a person, but also the vast majority of all warm-blooded ones. There is another interesting detail in this indicator. The fact is that the dynamics of the passage of specific heat indicators is characterized by a kind of symmetry. It lies in the fact that at temperatures below zero also has its own value of the minimum heat capacity. It is at a temperature of -20 C. This is precisely how a parameter such as the specific heat of water characterizes, a table that is used to quickly determine the values of thermal conductivity.
The reason for this phenomenon should be explained on the basis of the analysis of the physical properties of water. Water is a chemical compound with a very high heat capacity. This means that, being able to absorb a significant amount of heat energy, the water itself, at the same time, heats up insignificantly. Comparing with other substances, we see that the specific heat of water is as much as 5 times higher than the same parameter for sand and 10 times for iron.
It is this ability of water to accumulate gigantic reserves of heat energy that ensures the stability of the temperature regime on the planet and makes it possible to smooth out the negative effects of temperature jumps due to changing seasons, hours of the day. Water, due to its characteristics in the field of heat capacity, acts as the main temperature regulator of the Earth.