Clusterization of water molecules as deduced from statistical mechanical approach

Using the methods of statistical mechanics we have shown that a homogeneous water network is unstable and spontaneously disintegrates to the nonhomogeneous state (i.e. peculiar clusters), which can be treated as an ordinary state of liquid water. The major peculiarity of the concept is that it separates the paired potential into two independent components—the attractive potential and the repulsive one, which in turn should feature a very different dependence on the distance from the particle (a water molecule in the present case). We choose the interaction potential as a combination of the ionic crystal potential and the vibratory potential associated with the elastic properties of the water system as a whole. The number ℵ of water molecules that enters a cluster is calculated as a function of several parameters, such as the dielectric constant, the mass of a water molecule, the distance between nearest molecules, and the vibrations of nearest molecules in their nodes. The number of H₂O molecules that comprise a cluster is estimated as about ℵ ≈ 900, which agrees with the available experimental data. Presented at the 2nd International Conference “Physics of Liquid Matter: Modern Problems” (September 2003, Kyiv, Ukraine)