SABANCI UNIVERSITY
Course NS210
Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences Spring Semestre 2009
Water: Its Physics, Nanophysics, Chemistry, and Geopolitics
First class: Tuesday 3 March 08
Tu 5:40 pm-7:30 pm FENS G032
Instructor
office
tel
office hour*
A. Nihat Berker FENS G011
483-9009,9623
Mon 4:30-5:30
nihatberker@sabanciuniv.edu,
http://myweb.sabanciuniv.edu/nihatberker
Guest lectures by Can Güven and Ozan Sarıyer
Teaching Assistant: Melda Kantar
*Office consultations can also be arranged by appointment. Please call!
Course Outline:
I. The hydrological cycle. Global ocean surface and deep-sea currents. Volcanic island arcs.
Last ice age, ice sheets, and glaciers. The oceanic microbial soup.
II. Rivers and craters on Mars. Surfaces of Jupiter’s moons Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa.
II. Phase diagram of water. The water molecule. The hydrogen bond. Structures of liquid water and ice.
Snowflakes and dendrides. Computer models. Anomalies of water. Incipient liquid-liquid criticality in water.
Flow through nanotubes. Water in biological systems.
IV. Urban distribution of water in Istanbul through history. Geopolitics of water.
Grades: weekly quizzes 33%, midterm 33%, final 34%.
(The lowest two quiz grades will be thrown out.)
References:
P. Ball, Life’s Matrix: A Biography of Water, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, NY (2000).
P. Ball, Water as an Active Constituent in Cell Biology, Chemical Reviews, vol. 108, pp.74-108 (December 2007).
P.B. Debenedetti and H.E. Stanley, Supercooled and Glassy Water, Physics Today, vol.40, pp.40-46 (June 2003).
F. Franks, Water: A Matrix of Life, 2nd ed., Royal Society of Chemistry, UK (2000).
S. Helmreich, Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas, U. of California Press (2009).
F. Sedlmeier, J. Janecek, C. Sendner, L. Bocquet, R.R. Netz, and D. Horinek, Water at Polar and Nonpolar Solid
Walls, a Review, Biointerphases, vol.3, pp.23-38 (2008).
Carbon Dioxide Phase Diagram
Nitrogen Phase Diagram
Quiz 4 31 March 2009
10 minutes
Why are the volcano arcs not exactly on the lines where the tectonic plates meet?