Solved cryptogram
For a molecule this small, water ought to boil far below room temperature. It does not.
Chemistry Facts, sourced to University of Calgary.
Solve it yourself
This fact is a cryptogram here: 69 letters over 19 different ones, graded hard.
Or go to the puzzle’s own page first.
What it means
Compare it with its neighbors in the same column of the table. Hydrogen sulfide is heavier than water and boils at sixty degrees below zero Celsius; on that trend water should boil somewhere near eighty below. It boils at one hundred above instead, because each molecule is stuck to several others by hydrogen bonds and escaping the liquid means breaking all of them. Without that anomaly there would be no liquid water on this planet.
The claim comes from University of Calgary.
- SourceUniversity of Calgary
- CollectionChemistry Facts
- Difficultyhard
- Length69 letters, 19 of them different
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