Credit: Image courtesy of Takeshi Egami, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee
Researchers have advanced the fundamental understanding of the most abundant substance on earth—water. In this study, scientists collected inelastic X-ray scattering data and converted it to describe the inter-molecular interactions with time (t) in picoseconds (ps). The color in the plot indicates the probability of finding neighboring molecules in a particular place, at a particular time, with red indicating a high probability. The time associated with the exchange of the first and second neighbors is directly related to the material’s viscosity. Using this technique, researchers can now make a direct connection between the molecular dynamics observed in a liquid and its viscosity or other rheological properties.