Anomalous water: an end to the anomaly

Several years ago the possible discovery of a form of water with anomalous properties—high density, high refractive index, low vapor pressure, low melting point—generated intense experimentation and heated debate (PHYSICS TODAY, September 1969, page 61; October 1970, page 17). In a new book (Recent Advances in Adhesion, edited by Lieng‐Huang Lee of Xerox Corp), Boris V. Deryaguin, whose group of workers at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow first reported this anomalous water (later called “polywater” by others to suggest a polymeric structure), has concurred with his former opponents that the observed properties are caused by the presence of impurities rather than by a new structure of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Deryaguin states that he and his coworkers, using an electron‐probe technique, detected silicon and/or some other impurities in even the cleanest samples of anomalous material.

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