The Chronicle Flask: 2014 in review

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Happy New Year!

It’s been an exciting year for this blog, with a big increase in readers (thank you everyone!) The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report which is really quite interesting….

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 120,000 times in 2014. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 5 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

8 thoughts on “The Chronicle Flask: 2014 in review”

  1. Hello,

    can you please contact me. i have questions with regards to spring water.. ph.tds etc. Please

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      • i’m not sure if this is where i should be placing my questions. But i did put some below anyway.

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  2. O.k,

    Is distilled water safe to drink long-term? (because of its lack of minerals i.e causes leaching from the body)
    Does boiling water destroy or effect the hydrogen?

    At what ph do metals become more soluble?(the spring i’m drinking from has a ph of 5.8)

    Any info would help and be greatly appreciated

    thank you

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  3. Hi, I believe distilled water would be perfectly safe, so long as you also eat a reasonably balanced diet. Your food will supply more than enough minerals. However distilled water is expensive, takes a lot of energy to produce (so arguably isn’t great for the environment), and tastes very strange. There is absolutely no benefit to drinking it. Tap water (so long as you live in a country with good water purification systems) is perfectly safe to drink. There is no evidence that water chlorination or fluoridation are harmful, and plenty of evidence that they are beneficial.

    When water boils the H2O molecules simply move from a liquid state to a gaseous state. The covalent bonds within the molecules aren’t broken, and no hydrogen (or oxygen) is released.

    Metal solubility varies on the metal. Most metals do become more soluble in acidic conditions, but this is only something to worry about if you think the water has been exposed to metals somehow. If so, you shouldn’t drink from it regardless. Obviously some metals are more harmful than others. Lead, for example, is a real concern even in small amounts. A small amount of iron on the other hand is probably harmless.

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    • Curiously, when you heat water it does technically release more hydrogen (as hydronium) and hydroxide due to Le Chatelier’s principal. As the amounts of hydronium and hydroxide are balanced then actual acidity is not affected even if the pH value can go from 7.47 at 0oC to 6.14 at 100oC. Boiling water certainly won’t make it any healthier or unhealthy to drink from an acidity aspect though I still recommend that you wait for it to cool down before you do.

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      • Well, yes but firstly that process is entirely reversible (it’s H+(aq) that forms, not H2 gas which could escape the solution) and also it’s a minuscule amount. Something in the region of 7×10-7 H+ ions. Definitely not an amount that would make a noticeable difference!

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