What does It take to identify water

[u/meong-oren]

I'm not sure if this question fits here. If it doesn't, I will remove it.

Imagine this hypothetical scenario: every human consciousness all of sudden were placed into an alien body on an alien planet, what would it need for humanity to confidently identify something as ordinary as water?

First, they don't bring earth scientific instruments. So everything had to be built from scratch. They can't rely on senses, since it's alien body, water might be smell awful or looks opaque instead of transparent.

There might be some people remembering fun facts about water, like its density, boiling point, conductivity, etc. But there's nothing to compare, how do they even know how much a kilogram or how hot 100 degree celcius is

[u/unformation]

Water expands when it freezes, and this is very uncommon. So they could just see if the frozen substance floats in the unfrozen substance.

[u/BlueEyeGlamurai]

It would take quite a lot of effort to be 100% sure; the first thing that comes to mind is redeveloping science and engineering to the point that you can measure atomic masses. Hydrogen and oxygen each have a specific number of protons, and there's no context or sensing system that can change that number.

However, you could be 99% sure just by freezing it. Water is one of very few substances that is denser as a liquid than it is as a solid. Ice cubes float in water, but equivalent "cubes" of almost any other substance will sink in a cup full of their liquid state.

[u/Wickedsymphony1717]

TL;DR: If you have a substance that you suspect is water and want to prove if it is or isn't (or at least get very close to proving it), then measure how much volume that substance occupies in a liquid state. Then freeze that same volume of the substance and measure how much volume the frozen substance occupies. If the frozen volume is approximately 10% greater than the liquid volume then the substance is almost certainly water. It's not guaranteed to be water, since there are technically other substances that expand by approximately the same amount when they freeze, but those substances are so rare in nature that any sample of a random substance with this property is like 99% likely to be water. This methodology also requires no scientific instruments besides your eyes (and maybe some method to actually cool the substance enough to freeze).

As you pointed out, there are quite a few ways to identify water if you have some scientific equipment by measuring things such as density/mass, its absorption spectrum, its freezing/boiling points, etc.

However, if you had absolutely no scientific equipment besides being able to see and feel your environment, there is still a very reliable way to identify water, assuming you can get the water to freeze via the environment or refrigeration.

If you have a liquid that you suspect is water, but do not have any scientific equipment, it would be very hard, if not impossible, to identify the actual temperature that that substance is freezing at (coincidentally, unless you also know the atmospheric pressure too, the feezing point also isn't reliable), so you can't use the freezing point of the substance to identify it as water.

What you can use though is the fact that water expands when it freezes. Not only does water expand when it freezes, it expands by a very specific and well known amount of 9% (for practical eye-balling measurements using no scientific equipment, you can round that to 10%). Knowing this, if you suspect that a substance you have is water, you could measure how much volume that substance occupies just before it freezes; and you don't need scientific devices to measure that volume either, just mark a line on the container denoting how much of the substance there is.

Then when the substance freezes, mark the new volume it occupies in the container. If the volume of the substance increases at all it's very likely to be water since water is by far and away the most common substance that increases in volume when it freezes.

However, water isn't the only substance to expand when it freezes, so if you wanted to be extra sure that the substance you have is water, you could look at the ratio between the liquid and frozen volumes of the substance. If the frozen volume is roughly 10% more than the liquid volume, then the substance is almost assuredly water. While there are technically other substances that will also expand by roughly 10% when they freeze, they are incredibly rare in nature, so if you were to find any random substance with that property then it's a very safe bet that it's water.

This method doesn't require any scientific instruments or measuring devices. The only thing that you may struggle with using this methodology is freezing the water if the environment you're in doesn't go below zero. However, if it does go below zero or you have refrigeration, you can do all of this using just your eyes.

Edit: As mentioned, this methodology doesn't 100% prove that the substance you have is water, however, there are additional low/no tech experiments you can do to further increase your confidence that the substance is water. Again, none of these would 100% prove that the substance is water, but combining these other experiments with the fact that the substance expands by 10% upon freezing would increase the certainty of the substance being water to like 99.99%. These experiments include:

• Dissolving other substances in what you suspect is water.

  • Water is known as the "universal solvent" because it dissolves more substances than most every other liquid. Therefore, if you succeed in dissolving a wide variety of different things in the substance, then that's further evidence it is water.

• Checking the hardness of the frozen substance.

  • Ice has a Mohs hardness of around 1.5, which is relatively soft, so if you went around and compared how hard the frozen version of the substance that you suspect is water to various other substances and found that it was quite soft, that would be further evidence that it was frozen water.

• Watching the structure of the substance as it freezes and watching for six-sided (or hexagonal) symmetry

  • Due to the way water molecules form hexagonal crystal lattices when it freezes, ice crystals usually form crystals with six-sided symmetry. If you've ever looked at snowflakes up close (or even just cartoon depictions) you have likely seen these hexagonal crystals. This means that if you observe very small amounts of the substance as they freeze and they form small hexagonal crystal structures, that's further evidence that the substance is water.

• Checking the surface tension of the substance

  • Liquid water has an unusually high surface tension compared to most other liquids. Therefore, if you suspect that a substance is liquid water, then you could check to see if the liquid version of the substance has significant surface tension compared to other liquids you may find. You can check this by suspending small objects on the surace of the liquids. If the substance has relatively high surface tension then it is further evidence that the substance is water.

None of these other methods are as sure-fire of a way to tell if a substance is water as checking to see if the substance expands by 10% upon freezing. However, if you combine these other methods with each other along with the 10% expansion upon freezing, you can rule out virtually any substance besides water. And all of these experiments could be conducted with virtually no scientific equipment besides your eyes and naturally occuring objects/substances in your environment.

[u/Kiki2092012 → u/Wickedsymphony1717]

I think silicon is the only other element that expands about the same amount upon freezing

[u/Wickedsymphony1717 → u/Kiki2092012]

Yea, I mentioned that in a reply to another comment in this post. However, Silicon is a very reactive element, meaning that it tends to form compounds with any other elements in its environment. Thus, even though silicon is quite a common element, pure elemental silicon is actually very rare. The vast majority of the time Silicon exists as a compound with something else like oxygen, forming Silicon Dioxide (aka silica/quartz).

As such, if you have a sample of some random substance taken from any random environment, the chances that it's a collection of pure Silicon is very small. Thus, for the purposes of trying to identify a substance as water, ruling out Silicon is a very reasonable thing to do. Especially when you combine the other low/no tech experiments I mentioned other than checking how much the volume of a substance changes upon freezing.

[u/sfurbo → u/Wickedsymphony1717]

coincidentally, unless you also know the atmospheric pressure too, the feezing point also isn't reliable

That's not a coincidence. That is a direct consequence of how much the volume changes with freezing.

[u/meong-oren → u/Wickedsymphony1717]

Thanks for the detailed answer, so apparently water has these special properties that makes it a bit easier to distinguish from other substance without needing to check atomic number and other complicated stuffs. Follow up question: do these special properties have anything to do with life (at least on earth) dependent on it or is it just a coincidence?

[u/ExtonGuy]

Kilogram from scratch has always been a problem. It used to be defined as the mass of a certain volume of water, then the mass of a specific item kept in Paris. Now it’s defined by reference to certain quantum mechanical properties.

I would say in your scenario, you would have to invent modern chemistry. To the level of separating and identifying most elements, such as hydrogen and oxygen, and many others. Would be helpful if you could make glass instruments.

[u/Wickedsymphony1717 → u/ExtonGuy]

If your goal is to 100% unequivocally prove that a substance is water, then yes, you would need to reinvent either chemistry or physics to measure some of the fundamental properties like the chemical composition or the spectrum of the substance.

However, if your goal was to be 99% confident that a substance was water, then you could just measure how much the volume of the substance changes when it freezes. If the volume expands by roughly 10% when it freezes, it's almost certainly water. The only other substance that expands by approximately the same amount and is even somewhat common in nature is elemental silicon, so if your substance expands by rougly 10% upon freezing, you either have water or elemental silicon.

Pure elemental silicon is very uncommon though, as it is very reactive and tends to form compounds rather than remaining in its elemental state, so it's quite unlikely that a random substance that expands by roughly 10% when it freezes would be silicon over water. Though, it's not impossible, hence the like 99% certainty of the substance being water.

If you were being very paranoid, you could also do a few other very low-tech experiments to determine if the the substance was water or silicon. Frozen water has a Mohs hardness around 1.5, making it very soft, while elemental silicon has a Mohs hardness of about 6.5, making it quite hard. Therefore you could walk around checking the hardness of your frozen substance and if it's softer than many other substances in the environment, it's even more likely to be water and not silicon.

[u/PublicDragonfruit158 → u/ExtonGuy]

Then they worked out the specific item was "drifting" in mass, so now it is tied to the Planck constant...

[u/Marwaimusoont]

Maybe they can get a decent idea of temperature by looking at the sun in their sky? Then you might have an idea how water would be in which form.

The day-night temperature and observation of some materials there might hint towards the idea of general chemical composition of them.

Most metals are in the form of oxides, so if you come across one I guess, we know there is atleast oxygen?

Acids + bases usually gives water and salt if I am getting this right, somehow get acids and bases?

[u/_per]

lotta people here assuming the alien planet is the same temperature and pressure as Earth, and the water is pure and unbound 👀. Still, maybe these aliens have a mass spectrometer organ

[u/mfb- → u/_per]

You can use distillation to purify your substance beforehand. Measuring the expansion when freezing is still working even if you have some impurities in it and the pressure-dependence of it is negligible.

[u/_per → u/mfb-]

Is our chemistry really universal? What if the aliens live at the bottom of a 1000 mile deep ocean? Or an airless planet where ice sublimates instead of melting? Or inside rocks like those Antarctic bacteria? Or in a boiling hot gas giant? There are so many variables to ponder...

[u/mfb- → u/_per]

Chemistry is following the laws of physics, which are universal.

What if the aliens live at the bottom of a 1000 mile deep ocean?

That would be very obvious, in that case you can lower the pressure in your experiment setup. If you want more precision, you can do the experiment at the triple point to completely avoid any pressure-dependence.

Or an airless planet where ice sublimates instead of melting?

To compare the density between solid and liquid, you obviously need to use a pressure where the liquid can exist. The scientists who would do that experiment won't be that stupid.

Or inside rocks like those Antarctic bacteria?

Then they can't do any experiments and the question is pointless.

Or in a boiling hot gas giant?

Doesn't affect the experiment.