If the atomic weight of water is 9, then it presents a bit of a problem regarding oxygen. Oxygen weighs about 16 times more than the same volume of hydrogen. When creating water, the weight ratio is 1:8, basically one volume of hydrogen plus a volume of oxygen which is half this proportion. Or another way, two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. If the atomic weight of water is 9, then oxygen does not have the atomic weight of 16, but rather it is 8.
A whole oxygen atom has the atomic weight of 8. But I wonder if what we see when we look at oxygen gas, as it presents itself as atomic weight 16, is some sort of relationship it has with itself. Maybe it just loves to hang about in pairs. It likes to react with itself. Isn't it lovely that a figure 8 appears to signify such a pairing?
Then hydrogen comes along, and with the aid of a spark or flame, it hands over the divorce papers and breaks the two oxygen atoms apart. Hydrogen thus reveals the true atomic weight of one oxygen atom to be 8. In doing so it gives us a bang and a flash and water.
Water is two volumes of hydrogen added to one volume of oxygen to give us not 3, but 2 volumes of water. Something happens which appears to make one volume disappear. So far I've suggested that the hydrogen atom shrinks to half its size to make water. This would make water a mixture of 50% hydrogen and 50% oxygen by volume.
The next suggestion was that the oxygen atom drops into a hydrogen atom and displaces something from the aether, and that it is this displacement which generates energy. Once again, this would mean water was a 50/50 mix of hydrogen and oxygen.
Where does it leave us now then? I like the idea that the oxygen atom is displacing something. In doing so, I am starting to imagine oxygen atoms as footballs or something, and that they enter hydrogen gas which looks more like a fluid - a liquid. In this displacement I think it's possible that energy could spill out from the electric fluid of the aether.
Also, I wonder what is the impact generated by seperating the paired atoms in oxygen gas to create water? What does it have to do with the bang and the flash that we find in the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen? A clue perhaps lies in electrolysis and the recombination of oxygen and hydrogen which gives us electricity.
When the electricity is introduced to the water - gas bubbles form at the platinum electrodes. Oxygen appears at the positive electrode (anode), and hydrogen at the negative (cathode). This would mean that the oxygen atom is paired inside the gas bubbles. It's taken outside energy to reform the oxygen into a gas. But here's the kick, if we switch off the electric supply, the dissappating bubbles give us some electricity back. Is it the division of the oxygen molecule which gives us electricity?
The oxygen molecules that make up oxygen gas take up a lot more space than those oxygen atoms in water. The atoms expand as a gas, and hang out in pairs, but split up and contract into something much smaller when part of liquid water. I imagine hydrogen as the referee holding two oxygen atoms apart. I think there is still a lot I don't understand about hydrogen. Hell, there's a lot I don't understand about anything!
When oxygen gas reacts with hydrogen gas it generates water vapour. You also get intense heat and a "pop". The water vapour condenses and forms liquid water. Surely, this condensation would pull a vacuum? (I apologise to those men of science whom might be reading this and thus find that their toe curls at the mention of the words "pull a vacuum"). We've seen how water condensing in a sealed can pulls a vacuum, and makes it look like the can had been sucked in from the inside. It appears therefore that the Universe is willing to expend a lot of energy to maintain equilibrium.
If the reaction to make water is hard and fast, it is perhaps suggestive that the Universe moves hard and fast to fill the vacuum. If the constant applied pressure of the Universe is 300,000 cubic km per sec, then it's going to fill a little ol' vacuum pretty darn quick. What exactly is filling this vacuum then? The aether? So far I've only managed to give the aether an ethereal, other world quality, when perhaps it is a little closer to home.
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