Water is perhaps the most ubiquitous, and the most essential, of any molecule on earth. Indeed, it defies the imagination of even the most creative science fiction writer to picture what life would be like without water. Despite decades of research, however, water's puzzling properties are not...

We use molecular dynamics simulations to study two- and three-dimensional models with the isotropic double-step potential which in addition to the hard core has a repulsive soft core of larger radius. Our results indicate that the presence of two characteristic repulsive distances (hard core and...