{"id":237370,"date":"2026-05-19T02:24:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T07:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/the-structure-of-water-entropy-determines-whether-ions-stick"},"modified":"2026-05-19T02:24:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T07:24:37","slug":"the-structure-of-water-entropy-determines-whether-ions-stick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/the-structure-of-water-entropy-determines-whether-ions-stick","title":{"rendered":"The structure of water: Entropy determines whether ions stick"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-structure-of-water-entropy-determines-whether-ions-stick3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Water molecules do not simply swirl around in complete disorder; they can form certain preferred structures. This scientific fact is often presented in entirely unscientific ways. For example, when people speak of an alleged \u201cmemory of water\u201d or of \u201cwater clusters\u201d as a possible explanation for homeopathy, among other things.<\/p>\n<p>All of this has been refuted. But even though water is not a magical information storage medium, its ability to form short-lived structures can have important consequences. This has now been shown in a study by TU Wien, in collaboration with the University of Vienna and the University of Oslo, as part of the Cluster of Excellence \u201cMECS.\u201d The team investigated how easily charged particles can be held at a surface\u2014a question that is important in many areas, such as research on batteries, fuel cells, and biological membranes. The new results show that this can only be understood if one takes into account the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2022-09-phases.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">structures that water forms<\/a> on nanosecond timescales.<\/p>\n<p>The research is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/sciadv.aee9469\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Science Advances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Water molecules do not simply swirl around in complete disorder; they can form certain preferred structures. This scientific fact is often presented in entirely unscientific ways. For example, when people speak of an alleged \u201cmemory of water\u201d or of \u201cwater clusters\u201d as a possible explanation for homeopathy, among other things. All of this has been [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}