From Nature:
The structural origin of anomalous properties of liquid water
Water is unique in its number of unusual, often called anomalous, properties. When hot it is a normal simple liquid; however, close to ambient temperatures properties, such as the compressibility, begin to deviate and do so increasingly on further cooling. Clearly, these emerging properties are connected to its ability to form up to four well-defined hydrogen bonds allowing for different local structural arrangements. A wealth of new data from various experiments and simulations has recently become available. When taken together they point to a heterogeneous picture with fluctuations between two classes of local structural environments developing on temperature-dependent length scales.
More.
Incidentally,
If water would not behave in this unusual way it is most questionable if life could have developed on planet Earth.
Shush! You didn’t hear that.
See also: Copernicus, you are not going to believe who is using your name. Or how.
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