The World of Emperor Gon of Carthage
The Planet of Aqua--The New Gaia theory
Emperor Gon of Carthage
January 21, 2002
Chapter 1 A thriftless linage
 Earth, frequently called the Planet of Aqua, is abundant with water. It is a substance so common that people rarely pay attention to it. But if we come to think of it, no other substances can compete with water in regards to its prodigiousness.
As you may know, substances exist in either solid, liquid or gas state, each showing different properties.
Explanation of each property would not be necessary. But in which state a substance may exist depend basically upon the temperature, in other words, how active its molecules are. Substances exist in the state of solid, liquid and gas, in ascending order of its activity,
Water, under 1 atmospheric pressure, would turn liquid from the solid state at temperature above 0 degrees centrigrade and into gas from liquid at 100 degrees centrigrade. So comes the puzzling part about the water. While most of the other substances increase its volume as it turns from solid into liquid and to gas, water, in its solid state that is ice, has larger volume then when it is in liquid state. The volume of water minimizes at 4 degrees.
Why substances increase its volume when temperature and its molecule activity rise can easily be understood if you view it as a schoolyard. Liquid state can be thought as the recess time when pupils are playing freely inside the schoolyard. In other words, the molecules are moving freely inside the designated limit. In this case, the walls surrounding the schoolyard are the surface of the water. Solid state would then be the time of the morning meeting when pupils are lined up. Even when all the pupils of the school are summoned, they can be gathered within a certain corner of the schoolyard just as the molecules can be brought together in a small area since they are neatly lined and vibrating in the same position.
On the contrary, gas state would be the dismissal time when school ends and pupils dash out of the schoolyard. It is a state when the molecules are free from any restraint from other molecules.
The fact that water increases its volume when it turns into ice would indicate that pupils in line are taking much more space in between each other then when they are playing freely, forcing them to protrude beyond the schoolyard. What an unproductive way of linage, wasting such a large space!
Now you can imagine how puzzling water is. But without these puzzling properties of water, scenes and phenomenon that are familiar to us would never be comprised.
Translated by Rie Ishida
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