Blog Post Image: Familiar yet strange: Water’s ‘split personality’ revealed by computer model

Normal ice (left) contains water molecules linked into ring-like structures via hydrogen bonds (dashed blue lines) between the oxygen atoms (red beads) and hydrogen atoms (white beads) of neighboring molecules, with six water molecules per ring. Each water molecule in ice also has four neighbors that form a tetrahedron (right), with a center molecule linked via hydrogen bonds to four neighboring molecules. The green lines indicate the edges of the tetrahedron. Water molecules in liquid water form distorted tetrahedrons and ring structures that can contain more or less than six molecules per ring. (Image courtesy of Jeremy Palmer)

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