We Finally Know Why Oil and Water Don't Mix 222
CoveredTrax writes "Everyone knows oil and water don't mix. It's a simple concept, sure, but the hydrophobic interactions between fats and water are crucial to the mechanics of microbiology. The weird thing is, the base theories of chemistry suggest that there's no reason oil and water shouldn't mix, even though it's obvious that's not the case. Now there's an explanation: a team of chemical engineers at the University of California, Santa Barbara have defined an equation that measures a compound's hydrophobic character. It's the first such equation of its kind."
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not really.
Does gravity work because mass distorts space or because of gravitons? At the heart of it most science doesn't care why, but it does care what.
Now theories are proposed to postulate a why, but they're usually used to encourage more experiments.
Many of the previous whys have been proved wrong, or at least incomplete, bohr model of the atom Newton's universal gravitation, any theory of superconductivity; but it doesn't matter the experiments and results were real and the ideas produced by the models useful.
Can't remember who said this, but Asking why we do science is like asking why we have sex, sure sometimes something useful comes out, but that's not the reason we're doing it.
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Interesting)
The answer to "why" something is, is that God did it. All the time. Every time.
At least according to my grandfather. An overly simplified conversation regarding such went like so:
Him: Helium rises because God did it.
Me: Helium rises because it is lighter than the rest of our atmosphere.
Him: Why is it lighter?
Me: It has less mass.
Him: Why does it have less mass?
Me: Because it does?
Him: So you admit that God did it.
Re:Entropy (Score:5, Interesting)
As implied by the parent post, one of the biggest reason scientists care is because this is a dominating contribution to the folding of soluble proteins--proteins in water. The hydrophic effect has been understood for a long time (half a centery), including the fact that the entropic contribution to the free energy is proportional to the surface area change between two separate oil droplets and one. (This is the a-a(0) term in their equation.)
Their equation further adds contributions for the surface tension of the solvent (gamma) and an exponential decay term for the drying of water between the two two hydrophobic surfaces are they approach each other. Such phenomena have been well characterized in the last ten or so years by molecular dynamics simulations, and this appears to be an experimental confirmation of this effect.
The statement, however, that this paper finally describes the enigmatic hydrophobic effect is a gross PR overstatement.