A high-pressure insight into the structure of water
By 
Philip Ball2024-10-22T13:30:00
The hydrogen-bonded network in liquid water resists compression; density increases instead arise from molecules moving into voids
The liquid state has always been a puzzle. The first proper theory to describe it, proposed by Johannes Diderik van der Waals in his 1873 doctoral thesis, presented it as a modification of a gas. By incorporating intermolecular attraction and finite molecular volume into the gas laws relating pressure, temperature and density, he predicted a sharp transition to a denser phase. In this view, the molecules in a liquid are more or less as disorderly as those in a gas.