Fast vs slow water: Explaining the fragile-to-strong transition
Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - 23:11
in Earth & Climate
Scientists have investigated the fragile-to-strong transition of water. Unlike most liquids, when water is cooled, the rate of increase of its viscosity reaches a maximum at a certain low temperature. The team showed that modeling water as a temperature-dependent mixture of two states -- disordered 'fast' water and locally ordered 'slow' water -- explained the fragile-to-strong transition and avoided the faulty predictions of earlier theories based on glassy behavior.