Researchers Rediscover the Structure of Water A team of
researchers at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource
has found the molecular structure of water to be more complex
than recently thought, suggesting that molecular models that
went out of fashion decades ago may be in fact more accurate
than recent ones. "The study of water has a very long history,"
said lead author Ling Fu, who is a postdoc at the Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique in France and who wrote
her PhD thesis on these results. "Other researchers have done a
very good job in their measurements; I hope that this work helps
advance the field." By recording how SSRL's X-ray beam scattered
off a flowing jet of water, Fu and colleagues Arthur Bienenstock
and Sean Brennan were able to determine the distances between
the water molecules in the jet. As recent models predicted, they
saw molecules 0.28 and 0.45 nanometers apart. These measurements
confirm the current commonly accepted model, which describes
liquid water as a group of