Water

I bought a book on Water the other day. I can hear you saying, 'Anorak, Geek, Nerd, etc.' but do I care? No. Water is one of the most fabulous substances in this world and possibly the entire Universe. Think about it.

Without it, you and I and all the creatures we know would simply not exist.

It is sometimes called the universal solvent. Well, not everything dissolves in water but many things do, an awful lot of things, in fact, but sadly not plastic bags.

It has the chemical formula, H2O - sorry cannot do the subscripts on here. Basically that means two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom in one molecule. So take my word for it, it has a molecular weight of 18. Now molecules of that weight move around quickly and cannot be retained by the gravitational pull of the Earth. Methane (aka cows farts), molecular weight 16, buggers off to the upper atmosphere and causes global warming.

We don't have puddles of methane here so why do we have oceans and lakes of water?

Well, water molecules are friendly so they clump in groups of six so the weight goes up to 6 x 18, which is 108 and that makes them too heavy to escape. And that's why you and I are here.

You don't believe me? Have you ever looked at a snowflake, any snowflake? They are all hexagonal.