alternative quality measurement

The healing water

Glittering water bottles — Water, a most mundane substance (or is it not?), here captured in bottles and glittering in the sun.
Photo: Lasse Johansson

The water flashes in the bottle, refracting the light from the sun. Veiled behind drops of condensation, a small pocket of air resides, between the surface of the water and the cap. Silvery, with a magical shimmer, water can sometimes look almost otherworldly. Like the healing elixir, brought to the companions of King Arthur, from the misty realms of Avalon.

The idea of some waters having a healing power can be traced back at least to ancient Greece. Equally old is the idea that hands-on healing (laying on of hands) may have a healing effect. In the 1960s, the Canadian biologist Bernard Grad (1920-2010) decided to investigate Continue reading The healing water

When water freezes

Distilled water ice image — Ice image of distilled water: A sparse and ordered structure surrounds the core. Photo: From the Gisela Ahlberg collection, Institute of Ecological Technology. (The photos have been slightly colorized.)

The temperature drops, water cools, and suddenly, there is a crest of ice on the surface, slowly growing and deepening. Soon it will be so hard that we can touch it without destroying it, and even walk on it. Anyone who has been skating on a lake will know that there is ice and there is ice. Sometimes clear, sometimes so filled with air bubbles as to be almost completely opaque.

The Swedish water investigator Gisela Ahlberg decided to explore this, and devised a method, together with her colleague Christina Weldero, to study natural waters by ice images. Continue reading When water freezes

The quality of water

Leaves resting on amber-coloured pond — Birch tree leaves resting on the surface of a small amber-coloured pond that has formed after the rain. Photo: Lasse Johansson

In the autumn, leaves fall onto the ground, into the small ponds forming here and there, soon with brownish amber-coloured water. Resting for a moment on the surface, until a splash or a footstep causes it to cross the surface and sink towards the bottom, contributing to the forming colour.

As the leaves break down, the oxygen in the water is consumed, and the humus acids tint the pond. The water in the lower layers becomes reductive, oxygen deficit. Slowly the water sinks down, and enters the groundwater cycle.

What could these two things, the resting leaf and the amber-coloured water tell us about water quality? Continue reading The quality of water