"You can't say what is necessary for life - you are life itself!" - wrote about water Antointe de Saint-Exupery.
People have always settled along the shores of seas, rivers and lakes. First of all, this was dictated by convenience - water provided food, was used for household needs, it was more convenient to move along it when there were no roads. But water was revered not only because of its practical benefits, in ancient beliefs it is the blood of living matter, raw Earth.
Fairy tales and legends
In ancient times, water has always been deified on all continents; many myths, tales and legends have been written about it. In some myths, it plays the role of watersheds between the world of the living and the afterlife. For example, the Leta River from ancient Greek mythology, along which the dead Charon ferries the underworld.
Our ancestors endowed water with miraculous power, the ability to instantly heal wounds and resurrect people and animals, heal from many diseases, they used to guess and make conspiracies.
In the fairy tales of the Russians, the Brothers Grimm and other works, “living” and “dead” water appeared - “Rejuvenating apples”, “Morevna Sea”.
According to the story of the fairy tale "Ivan Tsarevich and the Gray Wolf", beloved from childhood, the faithful wolf rescues the Tsarevich, first sprinkling him from a bottle with "dead" water, after which the wounds healed, then "alive" - the young man was completely healthy and unharmed.
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Water was attributed to character traits characteristic of people - anger, love, loyalty. There is a beautiful legend about the priest-Baikal and his beloved daughter - the water-queen Angara. She fell in love with the handsome Yenisei and when the priest fell asleep, she fled to her lover. Angry Baikal rushed after her, but did not catch up - the Angara River merged with the Yenisei forever.
Interesting Facts
Scientists do not believe legends and myths, they have been studying water and its properties for several centuries, and have learned a lot of interesting things about it.
All living things consist of water: animals and fish - by 75%, jellyfish - by 99%, tomatoes - by 90%. Human: 86% in infancy, in the body of elderly people up to 50% water, on average - 70%.
The needs of people in this liquid: without air you can live 3-4, maximum 6 minutes, without water - 5-6 days, without food - up to 6 weeks.
Strong thirst arises when only 2% of water is lost, at 10% - hallucinations arise, consciousness becomes cloudy, having lost 20% of the liquid, the person dies.
If you ask people where the water is most, he will probably say that in the World Ocean. It turns out that in the earth's mantle, there is 10 times more of it. Unfortunately, only 3% of all reserves are suitable for drinking, most of which are concentrated in glaciers.
I wonder what is the fastest way to get ice - from chilled water or hot. Logically, the hot one should first cool down, then freeze. In fact, as a result of the experiments carried out, it has been proven that boiling water turns into ice faster. There is no exact explanation for this phenomenon yet. It is believed that the matter may be in evaporation, convection, the difference in hypothermia.
Unique properties of the liquid
Water has abnormal physical properties, it is not a completely studied substance and its nature is not fully disclosed. In 1783, the scientist Lavoisier proved that liquid is a combination of oxygen and hydrogen.
Later they found out that the substance with the chemical formula H2O is unique in its properties.
The heat capacity of water is incredibly high - to heat it by just one degree, it takes at least twice as much energy as for any other liquid. It remains warm for a very long time, thanks to this, a person's temperature is maintained at the same level both on a hot day and on a cold night.
The solid state of water is ice. Its properties are also amazing - there are almost no impurities in the structure of ice, freezing, they are displaced into the liquid. Many could observe this even in childhood, looking with interest at the puddles covered with a crust of ice - the ice floes are almost transparent, even if the water is dirty.
Ice and snow are highly reflective, so polar regions do not noticeably heat up when emitted, and our Earth is not subject to significant annual increases in ocean water.
The gaseous state also plays a significant role in the life of the planet: it turns into vapor, a gas with a density below air. If the vapor were heavier, the surface of the Earth would be covered with an eternal thick layer of fog.
Penetrating into any crevice, for example, in rocks, water freezes and expands. The hardest rocks split and disintegrate into small pieces, fertile soils are formed on these layers - the life cycle repeats.
Since school, it is known about three states in which water is located - liquid, solid and vapor. But scientists believe that there are much more of them - only in liquid form there are 5 of them, and in frozen form there are much more - 14.
If you continue to cool the frozen water, amazing transformations begin to take place with it: at a temperature of 120 ° C, the liquid becomes a viscous and viscous consistency, dropping below 135 ° C - it turns into the so-called glass water, a solid that does not have a crystalline structure.
Healing springs
Our ancestors affectionately called water "mother", realizing its significance at the dawn of civilization, they felt that there can be no life without water.
With the spread of Christianity, they stopped deifying water, but they did not stop believing in its medicinal properties. And in our enlightened time, people enjoy drinking spring water, considering it useful. Many sources are known not only to local residents, people come to them for treatment from afar.
Near the ancient town of Izborsk, in the Novgorod region, springs are gushing, the water of which returns youth and beauty to people.
Not far from the village of Tlacot, on the outskirts of Mexico City, there is the spring of Jesus, to which the queue stretches for a kilometer or more. People are gathering containers with miraculous water, which is believed to cure all diseases, even cancer.
In Germany, near Düsseldorf, a source of clean water was discovered in an abandoned mine. According to eyewitnesses, some got rid of blindness, others cured osteochondrosis and gout, others forgot about high blood pressure.
There has always been a mystical connection between water and man, it is not for nothing that you can look at the sea for hours, admire the calm flow of the river or listen to the quiet murmur of a stream. Since ancient times, water has been associated with a person with emotions, intuition, and the subconscious. Most likely, we do not know everything about it, and with the further development of science, something completely new and unique will be discovered.
