A Mathematical Primer on Water Ice

TL;DR

This paper provides an overview of water's various ice crystal structures, highlighting their significance for understanding water behavior in different environments and aiding simulation calibration.

Contribution

It offers a concise mathematical overview of water ice structures, connecting their properties to biological and simulation contexts.

Findings

Different ice structures reveal insights into water's potential configurations.

Ice structures have distinct dielectric properties relevant to biological environments.

The primer facilitates further research into water's solid-phase behaviors.

Abstract

Water adopts many different crystal structures in its solid form. These provide insight into potential structures of water even in its liquid phase, and they can be used to calibrate pair potentials used for simulation of water. In crowded biological environments, water may behave more like ice than bulk water. The different ice structures have different dielectric properties. This brief primer is intended to facilitate further research.