How did I end up here—in a bathtub with a smelly old man? Some of my friends splashed out. And he ran out, screaming at the top of his lungs. Seems like someone has never taken a bath before.
What have I gotten myself into?
I totally forgot to introduce myself. I am Dihydrogen Monoxide. Just kidding, no one calls me that, not even scientists, except kids who want to look smart in chemistry (and that one time in 1997, when a guy made a prank social experiment, no one knew who I was, resulting in a petition to ban me. Society. But don’t get me started down that rabbit hole, that’s another story for another time.)
You can call me “water” instead.
People also address me by many other names.. Sometimes, when I get cold and stern, people call me ice. When I feel playful and airy, I’m vapor. When I create wispy streaks in the sky, I’m a cloud. When I fall to the ground, I’m rain, or snow, or sleet, or hail, or all that combined. I know, it’s complicated. Back to the point.
I’m actually famous—not to brag—but everyone seems to like me: fish, birds, dogs, humans, bacteria, oak trees, mold, and life in general. Except cats of course; cats hate me, which is a shame, because I like cats.
Let’s wind back a few billion years ago. I was drifting in outer space on my beautiful home meteor. We were doing nothing in the frigid, empty darkness.
Everything was weightless…
Pointless…
.
.
Suddenly, a call…
Aforce drawing me in. Finally, a direction!
Then, I noticed what’s pulling me: a big, bright red, ugly piece of rock.
Its surface was flecked with volcanoes and streaking lava rivers–like the veins of a bodybuilder. Clouds of smoke and ash covered the atmosphere.
Out of all the planets for me to drop.
But still, there was a natural attraction, stringing me towards it...
A strong impulse urging me to approach it…
An inviting beckon…
A summoning…
Somehow, I gravitated towards the fiery abomination…
Literally. The big, stupid, excuse of a planet was so big, it pulled usin with its gravity.
The meteor and I entered the atmosphere. The wind made a thunderous whistle, as we streaked through the planet’s air, burning up upon contact. We accelerated, and burned, and burned. Up until…
WHAM!
We hit the planet with the force of a thousand nukes. The pure energy from the impact was enough to vaporize and send me on a planet tour. As I soared through the planet’s dark and murky atmosphere at a thousand kilometers per hour, I got a glimpse of what would be my new home. It was just as unpleasant as it could get when messing around with newborn planets. I hate babies, and I couldn’t wait to make this baby blue.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was how I arrived on this planet, like an alien from a more advanced civilization, assigned to this lowly planet. To help, of course.
Your planet did cool down eventually. The crust formed, the dust settled, the surface cooled. And I made the planet blue. And green. And also white in some spots.
“How does this relate to my current odourful situation?” You may ask.
To which I answer, absolutely nothing.
So, back to the old pasty guy. Apparently, his king had some trouble figuring out whether his crown was pure gold–you know, the usual human stuff. (Seriously though, what is up with your obsession with gold? Water is obviously better. You can’t eat gold, can you?)
My guy was super smart, he created laser beams to burn enemy ships from afar by scribbling a few words.He laid the foundation for science and mathematics for the years to come, and even counted the number of sand grains that fit in the universe! This trivial gold problem should have been nothing compared to universal sand-grain counting. So, right after his meeting with the king, the first thing he did was take a bath. Typical. This guy showers after meeting the king.
One of my properties is that us water molecules cannot compress, so when the guy got in, some of my friends splashed out of the tub. (I wouldn’t blame them. Kids, don’t forget to shower everyday, or you’ll get dermatitis, or even worse, reek like Archimedes.) He noticed that. Something clicked.
Like the genius he was, this guy got up from the bathtub, faster than a cat, and sprinted off into the sunset, shouting Greek gibberish, naked.
Wow, the drama he caused back in the day. I still remember the headlines: “Local deranged man taken into custody for indecent exposure after attempts to have a bath for the first time in three years.”
Well, he proved to the king that the crown was actually fake gold (after getting bailed out, of course). Something about dividing the mass by the mass of water displaced. You know the story.
The good thing about math is that you can find the values of just about anything in the world with enough data. Did you know that in every glass of water you drink, there are almost 80 million water molecules from that infamous bathtub, from that very fateful day? Archimedes water. Think about that next time you drink water, because I may very well be in your next glass.