Paris (Roto Rooters) - The French government has provided 10M Euros (almost $14M U.S. dollars) to Aix-Marseille University Faculty of Sciences to conduct a study to determine why water is clear. An additional 7.5M Euros was granted to conduct a similar study on glass.
"It is really quite simple," said lead French researcher Jacques-Yves Clouseau, "we want to know why water is clear and you can see right through it instead of some opaque color. Everyone has wondered about it, going back thousands of years. We want to finally understand this timeless question."
Continued Clouseau "It doesn't make sense. How can you see right through it? It contains Hydrogen atoms, Oxygen atoms, those atoms are comprised of protons and neutrons and electrons, and each of those are made of quarks. And even now we are starting to understand what quarks are made of. All of those things are things, they exist, they are there but we can see right through the water. That boggles my mind and I want to know why it happens."
Clouseau's colleague, Yves Saint Lohan, is leading the similar research on why you can see through glass. Lohan expressed the same fascination as Clouseau. "All right. Glass is made of sand. I can see sand. It is on every beach in the world. You can build castles out of it. It flows through your fingers. Then you heat it up and it becomes glass and you can see through it? Wow, that is just amazing to me. How does that work?"
The research has already been going on on a limited scale, but with limited University funding. The government grants will enable greater depth of study and will fund the research for up to 5 years.