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  Soft Icelandic water 2022 | 2022

I’m holding a glass of Icelandic water; it looks the same as all the previous ones I’ve held in my hands. It looks the way water should look—it’s a colorless clear liquid. But something’s different; when you wash your hands, it coats them in a soft oily film, and it can’t be said that it’s odorless. I’m holding soft water in my hands. I verify my own observations. "Drinking water in Iceland is alkaline, with a pH of 6.5–9.5. Low concentrations of calcium and magnesium ions mean that the water is classified as soft.” (from: https://en.ni.is/geology/water)available on: https://en.ni.is/geology/water) Before the water got into the glass, it had changed its state (precipitation, glaciers), location, temperature (if groundwater comes into contact with hot intrusive rock, the water will heat up, causing it to rise to the surface and form a geothermal area). Both the specific ("egg") smell and the high temperature make me think that it might be able to react with another rare mineral—silver. It occurs to me, because I’ve been working with silver since high school and over the years, I’ve gotten to know it quite well, keeping a close eye on its properties, possible change of state, processing, mining and price on the market. In dry clean air, silver is still, but it only takes a very small amount of hydrogen sulfide for silver to start oxidizing—blackening, because a layer of silver sulfide Ag2S is formed on its surface. Just out of curiosity, I dip a sheet of silver into a glass of pure drinking Icelandic water. After a few hours, the visual trace of their interaction and combination is visible in the form of a brown—blue to black oxidation layer (depending also on the time of their interaction). It’s “only” pure water and at the same time it's not. Our world consists “only” of things and events. Through deep exploration we can get from the observation of water in a glass to the geological processes of planet formation and back to man. From mineral resources (non-renewable natural elements) to k economic geology. Even with one focused observation, we can peel off a multitude of connections layer by layer. Water in Iceland is a good example. Water erosion caused by surface water has played a major role in shaping the landscape. Electricity in Iceland is produced mainly in hydropower plants, it is also used for domestic heating and around 16 million tonnes of water are annually used up by energy-intensive industries. The clear, colorless water carries a trace of history and the processes associated with the Earth’s formation. Through it, the deep composition of the Earth comes into physical contact with our bodies. The innocent combination of tap water from Reykjavik and a 1 mm thick sheet of 925/100 silver created "tangible" evidence that our shared environment in which we live is formed by a tangle of processes and interactions of almost everything with everything.