Heavy Water

[science101]

In a recent class of mine we went into a deep conversation about water.

 

We went into the breakup of water, its importance to organisms, etc... We

 

soon came to the issue of hard water, and how it can affect us. One

 

scholar recalled a documentary of heavy water. To this day I have not

 

found a reliable source to any valuable intel relating to this subject. Please

 

point me into a direction that my help me to find information regarding heavy

 

water.

[insane_alien]

do you want stuff about heavy water or hard water? you mention both of these as if they were interchangeable, they are not.

 

one is a water molecule containing a high mineral content(hard water)

 

and the other is a molecule with heavier hydrogen isotopes (deuterium, tritium).

 

they are very different things.

[hermanntrude]

Heavy water is usually D2O. D stands for deuterium, which is an isotope of hydrogen which has a neutron AND a proton in its nucleus (unlike normal hydrogen, sometimes called protium, which has only a proton). There is another, even heavier isotope, with two neutrons and a proton, called tritium. I've never heard of water being made from tritium but i expect it can be done and probably has been. Of course you can also get combinations... things like DOH, TOD etc.

 

Heavy water (D2O) is interesting from several viewpoints, and wikipedia has a lot of info on it. One interesting fact is that ice-cubes made from D2O will sink in normal water.

[Mr Skeptic]

Interestingly, our enzymes are so specialized that replacing water with heavy water will eventually be fatal. You'd need a lot of heavy water though. If the heavy water also includes tritium, it will also be radioactive.

 

Hard water contains more dissolved minerals. So long as they aren't poisonous, it's just that many more minerals for your body. Hard water gets rid of soap suds better and in the days that people washed their hair with soap, rinsing with hard water made the hair dull because the minerals reacted to make the soap insoluble. Then rinsing with acid got rid of that and made hair shiny again.

[John Cuthber]

Rinsing hair with acid would not only be stupid from the obvious point of view, but it wouldn't work. Adding acid to soap or the scum formed from soap and hard water peoduces a greasy mess of fatty acids.

[Thikr]

Heavy water is usually D2O. D stands for deuterium, which is an isotope of hydrogen which has a neutron AND a proton in its nucleus (unlike normal hydrogen, sometimes called protium, which has only a proton). There is another, even heavier isotope, with two neutrons and a proton, called tritium. I've never heard of water being made from tritium but i expect it can be done and probably has been. Of course you can also get combinations... things like DOH, TOD etc.

 

Heavy water (D2O) is interesting from several viewpoints, and wikipedia has a lot of info on it. One interesting fact is that ice-cubes made from D2O will sink in normal water.

 

Tritium water is made on a daily basis in the US. Of course it is government controlled and called "Heavy Heavy Water" as if from a Sesame Street character. It is used in Nuclear Reactions (for cooling I think) and to create Superheroes like the Flash .

[John Connell]

There is a wealth of information about hard water that can be obtained from websites of companies who sell water softeners...I don't sell softeners, but we supply salt and potassium for softeners and this has been one of my best sources for practical education on the subject.

 

John

[Kaeroll]

Interestingly, our enzymes are so specialized that replacing water with heavy water will eventually be fatal. You'd need a lot of heavy water though. If the heavy water also includes tritium, it will also be radioactive.

Yup... kinetic isotope effect. Quite interesting actually. Put briefly, D is twice as heavy as H, and forms stronger bonds, leading to slower kinetics (typically about 7-8 times slower for a primary effect). As many enzymes shunt protons about for a living, large amounts of heavy water can really cock things up.