22nd March: World Water Day

It's World Water Day. Here are ten things you never knew about water.

1. Water is the most common substance on Earth. There is an estimated 326 million trillion gallons of the stuff on Earth.
2. Only about 1% of that is available for us to use for drinking, manufacture, growing things and everything else we use water for. 97% of the world’s water is salty or otherwise undrinkable. Another 2% is locked in ice caps and glaciers.
3. The amount of water on Earth never changes. There is exactly the same amount now as there was in the time of the Dinosaurs, yet human usage of it keeps rising.
4. Water expands by 9% when it freezes. That is why ice floats in water. It's also the reason why there is life on Earth at all. During ice ages the seas froze on the top, leaving pockets of water underneath where life could keep evolving. If ice sank, the seas would have been completely solid.
5. Water can dissolve more substances than any other liquid including sulphuric acid.
6. NASA has discovered water in the form of ice on the Moon, Mars and Mercury. There is liquid water on Mars, too, but the molecules are not freely accessible, because they are bound to other minerals in the soil.
7. There is more fresh water in the atmosphere than in all of the rivers on the planet combined. Even so, if all of it fell at once and spread out evenly it would only cover the globe with an inch of water.
8. People and trees are made up of about 75% water. Jellyfish and Cucumbers are 95% water.
9. We all know the freezing and boiling points of water - water boils at 100 °C (212 °F) and freezes at 0°C (32 °F). What you may not know is that adding Salt to water lowers the freezing point so the freezing point of seawater is more like -2 °C (28.4 °F). The boiling point falls as barometric pressure increases which is why ski chalet hosts can find boiling Eggs a challenge at higher altitudes. On the top of Mount Everest water boils at just 68 °C (154 °F).
10. Water molecules love to stick to things, especially each other. This is what causes surface tension and capillary action. The latter is what allows water to travel up narrow tubes against the force of gravity. This property is vital to life also, since our blood vessels are narrow tubes and Blood is mostly water.

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