Hard water is water that has high mineral content (in contrast with "soft water").
Hard drinking water is generally not harmful to one's health, but can pose serious problems in industrial settings, where water hardness is monitored to avoid costly breakdowns in boilers, cooling towers, and other equipment that handles water. In domestic settings, hard water is often indicated by a lack of suds formation when soap is agitated in water. Wherever water hardness is a concern, water softening is commonly used to reduce hard water's adverse effects.
Read more about Hard Water: Sources of Hardness, Effects of Hard Water, Measurement
Famous quotes containing the words hard and/or water:
“Harry: I don’t know when you’ll get back home. Could be a long time.
Slim: Could be forever, or are you afraid of that? I’m hard to get, Steve. All you have to do is ask me.”
—Jules Furthman (1888–1960)
“Instead of water we got here a draught of beer,... a lumberer’s drink, which would acclimate and naturalize a man at once,—which would make him see green, and, if he slept, dream that he heard the wind sough among the pines.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)