Kinetic energy of oxygen atoms in water and in silica hydrogel

Abstract The effect of temperature on the mean kinetic energy of Oxygen, Ke(O), in silica hydrogel (constituting of water confined in a silica Xerogel matrix) was computed between 5 and 325 K. The results are higher by up to 40% than those deduced from a recent deep inelastic neutron scattering (DINS) measurement. Note that when the mean kinetic energy of Hydrogen Ke(H) was computed using the same method a good agreement was obtained with the DINS measurement. This seems to indicate that the measured Ke(O) values are strongly underestimated due to the DINS method of analysis of the n-scattering intensities as discussed in the text.