Water on Multiple Length Scales From the Molecular Level to the Global Hydrosphere

The Gordon Research Seminar on Water and Aqueous Solutions is a unique forum for graduate students, post-docs, and other scientists with comparable levels of experience and education to present and exchange new data and cutting edge ideas.

Water is a very common substance: 80% of biological systems are water, it covers ¾ of the Earth’s surface. Yet, water holds many mysteries – so many that it has had its own biennial Gordon Research Conference for 50 years. Truly knowing water is a challenge because its three-dimensional structure changes in the briefest of time scales. Even in the solid form, the ice structure famously has considerable flexibility – enumerated in Pauling’s famous residual entropy of ice. On this, our golden jubilee, we will explore water at multiple length scales from small clusters to the global hydrosphere. Spectroscopic probes likewise will cover the spectrum from THz to UV. Due to its flexible bonding, water forms numerous interesting structures from clathrate hydrates that encapsulate orders of magnitude more guests than are normally soluble in water to water mediated aggregation of large molecules including proteins. Water shapes our world from soil to stratosphere, yet those interactions are ill understood. Those interactions include the most basic ice nucleation and growth – that brings us back to its entropy.

The program features a mix of laboratory experiments, theoretical efforts to unravel water’s mysteries, and larger scale environmental tracking and monitoring of water in soil and the atmosphere.