Water, good ol' H₂O, seems like a pretty simple substance to you and me. But in reality, water - the foundation of life and most common of liquid - is really weird and scientists actually don't completely understand how water works.

Here are 5 really weird things about water:

1. Hot Water Freezes Faster Than Cold Water

Take two pails of water; fill one with hot water and the other one with cold water, and put them in the freezer. The hot one would be frozen before the cold one. But wait, you say, that's counterintuitive: wouldn't the hot water have to cool down to the temperature of the cold water before proceeding to freezing temperature, whereas the cold one has "less to go" before freezing?

In 1963, a Tanzanian high-school student named Erasto B. Mpemba was freezing hot ice cream mix in a cooking class when he noticed that a hot mix actually froze faster than a cold mix. When he asked his teacher about this phenomenon, his teacher ridiculed him by saying "All I can say is that is Mpemba's physics and not universal physics."

Thankfully, Mpemba didn't back down - he convinced a physics professor to conduct an experiment which eventually confirmed his observations: in certain conditions, hot water indeed freezes before cold water*.

Actually, Mpemba was in good company. The phenomenon of hot water freezing first, now called the "Mpemba effect" was noted by none other than Aristotle, Francis Bacon and René Descartes.

But how do scientists explain this strange phenomenon? It turns out that no one really knows but there are several possible explanations, including differences in supercooling (see below), evaporation, frost formation, convection, and effects of dissolved gasses between the hot and cold water.

*In reality - of course - it's much more complex than that: hot water freezes first (it forms ice at a higher temperature than cold water), whereas cold water freezes faster (it takes less time to reach the supercooled state from which it forms ice) - see discussion on our previous blog post about this topic.

2. Supercooling and "Instant" Ice

Everybody knows that when you cool water to 0 °C (32 °F) it forms ice ... except that in some cases it doesn't! You can actually chill very pure water past its freezing point (at standard pressure, no cheating!) without it ever becoming solid.

Scientist know a lot about supercooling: it turns out that ice crystals need nucleation points to start forming. These nucleation points could be anything from gas bubbles to impurities to the rough surface of the container. Without these things, water would continue to be a "supercooled" liquid well below its freezing point.

When nucleation is triggered, then a supercooled water would "instantly" turn into ice, as this very cool video clip by Phil Medina of MrSciGuy shows:

Note: Similarly, superheated water remains liquid even when heated past its boiling point.

3. Glassy Water

Quick: how many phases of water are there? If you answer three (liquid, gas, and solid) you'd be wrong. There are at least 5 different phases of liquid water and 14 different phases (that scientists have found so far) of ice.

Remember the supercooling we talked about before? Well, it turns out that no matter what you do, at -38 °C even the purest supercooled water spontaneously turns into ice (with a little audible "bang" no less). But what happens if you continue to lower the temperature? Well, at -120 °C something strange starts to happen: the water becomes ultraviscous, or thick like molasses. And below -135 °C, it becomes "glassy water," a solid with no crystal structure. (Source)

4. Quantum Properties of Water

At a molecular level, water is even weirder. In 1995, a neutron scattering experiment got a weird result: physicists found that when neutrons were aimed at water molecules, they "saw" 25% fewer hydrogen protons than expected.

Long story short, at the level of attoseconds (10^-18 seconds) there is a weird quantum effect going on and the chemical formula for water isn't H₂O. It's actually H_1.5O! (Source)

5. Does Water Have Memory?

In the alternative medicine of homeopathy, a dilute solution of a compound can is purported to have healing effects, even if the dilution factor is so large that statistically there isn't a single molecule of anything in it except for water. Homeopathy proponents explain this paradox with a concept called "water memory" where water molecules "remember" what particles were once dissolved in it.

This made no sense to Madeleine Ennis, a pharmacologist and professor at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Ennis, who also happened to be a vocal critic of homeopathy, devised an experiment to disprove "water memory" once and for all - but discovered that her result was the exact opposite!

In her most recent paper, Ennis describes how her team looked at the effects of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on human white blood cells involved in inflammation. These "basophils" release histamine when the cells are under attack. Once released, the histamine stops them releasing any more. The study, replicated in four different labs, found that homeopathic solutions - so dilute that they probably didn’t contain a single histamine molecule - worked just like histamine. Ennis might not be happy with the homeopaths’ claims, but she admits that an effect cannot be ruled out.

So how could it happen? Homeopaths prepare their remedies by dissolving things like charcoal, deadly nightshade or spider venom in ethanol, and then diluting this "mother tincture" in water again and again. No matter what the level of dilution, homeopaths claim, the original remedy leaves some kind of imprint on the water molecules. Thus, however dilute the solution becomes, it is still imbued with the properties of the remedy.

You can understand why Ennis remains skeptical. And it remains true that no homeopathic remedy has ever been shown to work in a large randomised placebo-controlled clinical trial. But the Belfast study (Inflammation Research, vol 53, p 181) suggests that something is going on. "We are," Ennis says in her paper, "unable to explain our findings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon." If the results turn out to be real, she says, the implications are profound: we may have to rewrite physics and chemistry. (Source)

So far, other scientists failed to reproduce Ennis' experimental findings (throughout, Ennis herself was skeptical of the result's interpretation that water has a "memory" but maintained that the phenomenon she saw was real).

See also Jacques Benveniste's Nature controversy | Louise Rey's thermoluminescence study

More recently, a team of scientists at the University of Toronto, Canada, and Max Born Institute in Germany, studying water dynamics using fancy multi-dimensional nonlinear infrared spectroscopy did find that water have a memory of sorts - in form of hydrogen bond network amongst water molecules. Problem for homeopathy was, this effect lasted only 50 femtoseconds (5 x 10^-14 seconds)!

Bonus: Ice Spikes

photo: SnowCrystals

Ice spikes are, well, spikes that grow out of ice cube trays. They look like stalagmites found in caves, and you can make 'em yourself using distilled water. Kenneth G. Libbrecht of SnowCrystals explains:

How do Ice Spikes Form?

Ice spikes grow as the water in an ice cube tray turns to ice. The water first freezes on the top surface, around the edges of what will become the ice cube. The ice slowly freezes in from the edges, until just a small hole is left unfrozen in the surface. At the same time, while the surface is freezing, more ice starts to form around the sides of the cube.

Since ice expands as it freezes, the ice freezing below the surface starts to push water up through the hole in the surface ice (see diagram). If the conditions are just right, then water will be forced out of the hole in the ice and it will freeze into an ice spike, a bit like lava pouring out of a hole in the ground to makes a volcano. But water does not flow down the sides of a thin spike, so in that way it is different from a volcano. Rather, the water freezes around the rim of the tube, and thus adds to its length. The spike can continue growing taller until all the water freezes, cutting off the supply, or until the tube freezes shut. The tallest spike we've seen growing in an ordinary ice cube tray was 56mm (2.2in) long. (Source)

Bonus 2: Make Instant Snow with Boiling Water

What do you get when you throw boiling water to the air in subzero weather? Instant snow. Interestingly, it only works with boiling hot water:

[YouTube clip]

These aren't the only things weird about water. We didn't talk about how water density changes with temperature (ice, for instance, is less dense than water so it floats - a key property of water that made life possible in the oceans and lakes). Nor did we talk about the weirdly strong surface tension of water, ordered clustering of liquid water, and so on. If you are interested, check out the Anomalous Properties of Water article by Martin Chaplin

(Links open in a new browser window/tab)

For more the web's most interesting videos, check out: VideoSift.

Ah, the Olympics: the intense competition, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, and ... a butt pinch by Hitler? If you are sick and tired of the greatest moments in the Olympic Games sort of stories, this Neatorama list is for you. Here are the 5 Dubious Moments in Olympics History:

1. Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards, Ski Jump

No, despite all predictions, Eddie the Eagle didn't crash [YouTube Link]

If, at 5 feet 8 inches and 181 lb, Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards looked more like a construction worker than an world class athlete, that's because he was one. The then 25-year-old plasterer from Cheltenham, England, was the only British applicant for the 1988 Winter Olympics ski jumping competition in Calgary, so he was accepted. This was even more remarkable when you realize that there was no ski jumps in Britain at the time.

Almost immediately upon arriving in Calgary, things started to go wrong for Eddie: his plane landed late and his bag ripped open on the airport carousel, so he had to jump on and chase his pants. Then it got worse:

By the time he arrived at Calgary, he had been given the ironic soubriquet Eddie the Eagle (critics suggested that the Briton, who was 20lb heavier than the average ski jumper, flew like a brick). He was widely expected to wind up in traction rather than on the medallists' podium. But first, he had to get out of the airport without major injury. For a few minutes, it seemed unlikely that he would. "As we were walking to the arrivals lounge, I saw a huge sign saying, 'Welcome to Calgary, Eddie the Eagle.' I said: 'Who's that for?' And somebody replied: 'You, you twerp.' So I walked towards it. It was 2.30 in the morning and the automatic doors had been turned off, so I walked into the glass and my skis bounced off the doors." And he says he doesn't want slapstick. "That's when I got the nickname Mr Magoo." (Source)

Olympics purists were also appalled that Eddie was making a mockery of their sport. True to form, Eddie the Eagle's thick glasses fogged up so much as he wobbly jumped that he couldn't see. Needless to say, he landed dead last (though he didn't crash).

Eddie's warm demeanor, fun personality, and, let's face it, lack of success, made him a darling to the press and to people around the world. So he became a legend:

"They said I was afraid of heights. But I was doing 60 jumps a day then, which is hardly something someone who was afraid of heights would do." But he was afraid of jumping? "Of course I was. There was always a chance that my next jump would be my last. A big chance." (Source)

Afterwards, the Olympics committee instituted the "Eddie the Eagle rule," stipulating that athletes must place in the top 30% or be in the top 50 to qualify for the games.

Nevertheless, it was Eddie's moment in the sun:

The high point of Eddie’s career was when the President of the Games gave his closing speech. He said: ‘at this Olympic Games some competitors have won gold and some have broken records, and one has even flown like an eagle.’ At that moment, 100,000 people in the stadium got up and roared ‘Eddie, Eddie.’ It was the first time in the history of the Games that an individual athlete had been mentioned in the closing speech. (Source)

2. Jamaican National Bobsled Team, Bobsleigh

The Jamaican National Bosled Team, however, did crash [YouTube Link]

The 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, Canada also saw another great example of guts over glory in the Jamaican National Bobsled Team.

Now, the whole thing got started when two Americans, Mayor of Warrenton, Virginia, George B. Fitch and his business partner William Maloney noticed that pushcart derby in Jamaica looked very similar to bobsled (technically called bobsleigh). So they decided to persuade the Jamaicans to train for the winter Olympics.

At first, they tried to recruit Olympic-class sprinters, but there were no takers ... but the Jamaican military was game! The first members of the Jamaican National Bobsled Team were soldiers. They started practicing on push carts and makeshift sleds on the flat concrete floor at a military base in Kingston.

The epic struggle of the Jamaican bobsledders (they crashed spectacularly in the third heat of the four man bobsleigh event) won the hearts of viewers worldwide. Their courage, determination, tenacity and sheer what-in-the-world-were-they-thinking-bobsledding-in-Jamaica even landed them a movie deal: the Jamaican National Bobsled Team were immortalized in the 1993 Disney comedy Cool Runnings.

The Jamaican National Bobsled Team actually improved dramatically afterwards. In 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, they placed ahead of the US, Russian, French, and Italian teams!

3. Philip Boit, Cross-Country Skiing

In 1996, Nike decided on a sports experiment / PR stunt - it would pay for two Kenyan long distance runners, Philip Kimely Boit and Henry Bitok, to train in cross-country skiing for the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. The two Kenyans have never skiied before in their lives - heck, they've never even seen snow until they arrived in Finland to train.

Bitok never qualified for the race, but Boit did. He cross-country skiied in the 10-kilometer classic in Nagano ... and came in dead last. The awards ceremony for the race had to be delayed because the winner, Norwegian cross-country skier and legend in the sport Bjørn Dæhlie, insisted on waiting 20 minutes for Boit to cross the finish line so he could cheer Boit on!

Boit's participation in the Winter Olympics was controversial - many people accused Nike of exploiting the Kenyans and making a mockery of the sport. Boit, however, was determined to ski and even when Nike dropped its sponsorship, he continued to train on dry land in Kenya. He qualified for the 2002 Winter Olympics, and finished ahead of 3 competitors in a sprint race. (Image: BBC)

4. Eric "The Eel" Moussambani, Dog Paddle ... er, Swimming

[YouTube Link]

In an effort to encourage athletes from developing countries to compete, some swimmers were invited to perform even though they never qualified. One of those athletes was Eric Moussambani from Equitorial Guinea.

Eric, who later earned the nickname "The Eel" after his epic performance, learned to swim just a few months before the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. In fact, he had never seen an Olympic-size swimming pool before in his life (he practiced swimming at a hotel's pool, one of the only two pools in the entire country).

When his two other competitors were disqualified for a false start, Eric swam all by himself. Technically, he dog paddled:

Moussambani would plough a lonely lane for his finest 1mins 52.7sec, though it felt like an hour. Equatorial Guinea’s aquatic answer to Eddie the Eagle - Eric the Eel - churned the lane in which Ian Thorpe had raced to a silver medal in 1min 45sec over double the distance the day before.

At first, the crowd clapped politely. But the mood turned upon Moussambani’s turn, for here was a man with an Olympic courage bigger than Thorpe’s feet. Confusion reigned for a moment - was he facing up or down, and did he know himself? A sense of relief washed over the pool as the man from Molabu surfaced to take a breath.

The largely Australian crowd - nearly every man, woman and child probably capable of swimming faster than Moussambani - warmed to the occasion and lifeguards stood by poised to plunge in for the rescue as the swimmer’s stroke shortened, and his legs sank from the surface. With a final desperate lunge, Moussambani was safe. It would be some while before he could get dry; an hour after clambering shattered on to the deck, he had still not made it through the gauntlet of cameras, microphones and media. (Source)

Later, Eric the Eel said, "The last 15 meters were very dificult."

5. Helen Stephens and the Butt Pinch by Hitler

As promised. here's the story of the Hitler butt pinch:

Photo via octopusmagnificens blog

Eighteen-year-old Helen Stephens, nicknamed "Fulton Flash" after her birthplace of Fulton, Missouri, ran in the 100 m dash in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin ... and won.

As was the custom at the time, Stephens made the obligatory visit to Hitler's box after winning gold. In his Complete Book of the Summer Olympics, David Wallechinsky wrote:

She offered a firm handshake (Americans didn't give the Nazi salute), but Hitler offered a firm grope. "He gets ahold of my fanny," the Fulton Flash said, "and he begins to squeeze and pinch and hug me up, and he said, 'You're a true Aryan type. You should be running for Germany.'"

Then Hitler laid on the big offer: a weekend at his retreat in Berchtesgaden. She turned him down. (Source)

Side note: At the Olympics, Helen Stephens beat the reigning champ, Stanislawa Walasiewicz of Poland and there were accusations that Helen was actually a man. After a genital inspection proved otherwise, the matter was dropped.

Walasiewicz, who subsequently changed her name to Stella Walsh was killed in an armed robbery many decades later. In an ironic twist of fate, the autopsy showed that she actually had male genitalia (though she had both XX and XY pair of chromosomes). From that point on, she was often referred to as "Stella the Fella."

In a groundbreaking project to understand what the world's 1.3 million billion Muslims really think, Gallup World Poll conducted a massive, multiyear research and conducted tens of thousands of interviews in 35 countries with predominantly Muslim (or have significant Muslim) populations.

The result is this book: Who Speaks for Islam? by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed - and here are some of its most counterintuitive findings, as pertaining to terrorism and religious radicals:

•Among the Muslims surveyed, 7 percent condoned the 9/11 attacks. The study terms these the "politically radicalized."

•When asked why they supported the attacks, the radicals gave political rather than religious reasons. They have a sense of political frustration and feel humiliated and threatened by the West. Those who opposed the attacks often gave religious reasons for doing so.

•The radicals, on average, are not the down-and-out people in society. They are more educated than moderates, and two-thirds of radicals have average or above-average income. Forty-seven percent supervise others at work. They are more optimistic about their own lives than are moderates (52 percent to 45 percent).

•Radicals are no more religious than the general population and do not attend mosque more frequently. (Source)

The Christian Science Monitor has a nice summary of the book, divided into topics like Islam and democracy, women's right, and how Muslims view the West - via Il Filosofo

Photo provenance and back story unknown, if you know, please share- Thanks Ricky!

I'm at a loss for words on this one, folks - the car is so ... ghettofabulous!

So, for today's Neatorama and Hobotopia's Caption Monkey game, maybe you can do better: the funniest caption will win an original Laugh-Out-Loud cartoon by Adam "Ape" Lad" Koford.

Contest rules are darned simple: place your caption in the comment section. One caption per comment, please (you can submit as many funny ones you can think of!)

And be sure to visit Adam's blog for some fun and inspiring Laugh-Out-Loud cartoons.

Today's collaboration with the What is it? Blog brings us this strange object. As you can see, it's a driving instruction of sorts - but what is it specifically for?

Place your guess in the comment section - no prize this week, you're playing for fame and glory. For more clues and guessing game fun, check out the What is it? blog.

It was a wedding to remember: the cake ... the party ... and the taser? Yep, here's a story of how some hard-partyin' newlyweds get to spend their
first night of wedded bliss in the county jail ...

"The crowd was trying to hold back the groom from mouthing off more, but finally he broke free, and they had to take him down," Sepic said of police. "He was heading for the officers. . . . Then the bride moved in and tried to interfere."

As the newlyweds struggled on the ground, a police officer used a Taser on Somora, 29, police said. Pastuszwska, 28, was holding her new husband tight, and was shocked as well, Skowron and authorities said.

"Imagine the kids and grandma seeing the bride and groom getting Tasered on the floor," said Skowron. "In my opinion, the police totally overreacted."

Link (Photo: Kacper Skowron / For the Sun-Times)

Previously on Neatorama: World's Worst Wedding Night: Groom Tasered, Bride Tossed in Jail (apparently not so rare!)

With his epic 8 Olympic golds, Michael Phelps is definitely one of the fastest swimmers in the world. But just how fast do you think he swims? And how does Phelps stack up to the world's fastest fish? Neatorama investigates:

Though it's hard to measure the swimming speed of large fish in the wild, most sources believe that the fastest fish is the Indo-Pacific Sailfish (Istiophorus platypterus), that has been clocked in excess of 68 mph (110 km/h). Over short periods, they could swim even faster really, really fast. In a series of speed trials at the Long Key Fishing Camp in Florida, one sailfish took out 300 feet of fishing line in just 3 seconds! (Source: Australian Museum Fish Site).

Okay, so that's a little unfair. Let's try something slower.

A lot more research has been done on goldfish. According to Davison & Goldspink, a goldfish can be trained to swim at about 0.86 mph (1.38 km/h) Source: J. exp. Biol (1978) 74: 115-122.

For Michael Phelps, let's take his 100 m butterfly: 50.77 seconds for 100 m. That's a puny 4.4 mph (7.1 km/h) - about the speed of a brisk walk, actually, but still faster than a goldfish.

But wait a minute, you say, that's not fair since we failed to normalize the swim speed as compared to body length (Phelps, for one, is much much longer than a goldfish). No problem, it's easy enough to convert.An average goldfish is 8.5 cm, so its swim speed translates to about 4.5 Phelps is 6'4" (1.93 m) so this translates to about 1 body length/sec.

Here's the final comparison:

So. There you have it. Michael Phelps. Slower than a goldfish.

I don't know a whit about what went on during the proceedings, but this People's Court interview is mesmerizingly strange - even funny.

Check out what this guy said about how he felt after facing "The Ultimate Court of Opinion": Link

Think that bagpipes are a unique form of Scottish aural torture? Think again: behold the sakpipa, the Swedish bagpipes!

Yes. Pictured at left are " sakpipa säckpipa," which date from Medieval times. The tradition dwindled down to a single practitioner before undergoing a revival in the modern era. You can even listen to an MP3 recording of that old favorite - "Krigsvisa om danskarna" - about war with Denmark. Note the catchy lyrics:

"Armar, tarmar, lår och ben, sig upp i luften svinga,
och hela mänskokroppar med, sig stora flugor flinga..."

Which roughly translates as -

"Arms, guts, thighs and bones are flying through the air.
And whole human bodies too, attracting big flies."

Link

I love short video clips of Statler and Waldorf of The Muppets that are goin' round the Web.

It turns out that there's a slew of Muppets videos on YouTube as the Swedish Chef, Gonzo, Beaker, Sam The Eagle, and of course, Statler & Waldorf now have their own YouTube accounts.

Joe Hennes of ToughPigs has some of the funniest "Viral Muppeting" clips: Link

[YouTube Link]

Following the Terminator story, we go to this groundbreaking invention by professor Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading and colleagues: a robot with a living brain!

Meet Gordon, probably the world's first robot controlled exclusively by living brain tissue.

Stitched together from cultured rat neurons, Gordon's primitive grey matter was designed at the University of Reading by scientists who unveiled the neuron-powered machine on Wednesday. [...]

Because the brain is living tissue, it must be housed in a special temperature-controlled unit -- it communicates with its "body" via a Bluetooth radio link. The robot has no additional control from a human or computer.

From the very start, the neurons get busy. "Within about 24 hours, they start sending out feelers to each other and making connections," said Warwick. "Within a week we get some spontaneous firings and brain-like activity" similar to what happens in a normal rat -- or human -- brain, he added.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080813192458.ud84hj9h&show_article=1 | New Scientist Tech article - via Scribal Terror

Photo: Carlo Rossi's JugSimple

That's the Cabernet Couch, made from 33 empty Cabernet jugs and vintage corduroy futon mattress for the winemaker Carlo Rossi.

In what can only be called a strange yet utterly fascinating effort to turn the image of wine jugs from being associated with drunk winos into haute couture, Carlo Rossi also has the Chardonnay Chandelier ("jug count: 33"), Burgundy Bookshelf (jug count: 28), Paisano Plasma TV Stand, and more.

Link: Cabernet Couch - via Chair Blog (which btw, is ALL about chairs!)

Some of the funnest Flash games are the simplest - and this game Switch is no different: all you have to do is collect the balls of the same color, then switch over (by clicking your mouse) to collect balls of the other color.

Sounds easy, right? Well, it is ... for a while: Link - via FAZED

Photo: icarus-arts.com

I Lol'd heartily at these series of cute pics of the Guinea Pig Olympics (Olympigs?). From The Guinea Pig Games Calendar 2009 by Icarus Arts:

renowned 'ard-man, Squeakers "Knockout" Thompson, caused outrage four years ago when he not only bit the ear off of his competitor, Jimmy Nibbles, but ate his babies too

Link