The Importance Of Water To Living Organisms

The Importance Of Water To Living Organisms

Water is normally the most abundant component of any living organism.

As most human cells are approximately 80% water and 60% of the human

body is made up of it, it is extremely important in many different

ways to both the survival and the well being of living organisms.

Evolutionists believe that life probably originated in water and even

today thousands of organisms make their home in it. Water also

provides the medium in which all biochemical reactions take place.

The importance of water to living organisms originates from its many

properties including its solvent properties, its high specific heat

capacity, its high latent heat of vaporization, its surface tension,

its density and freezing properties, its transparency and its colloid

formation.

Water has been called a universal solvent and its properties as a

solvent depend on the fact that it is a polar molecule:

As we can see from the diagram, charge is shared out unequally and so

water is said to have ‘polarity’. This means that water can weaken

the attraction between ions of the opposite charge, because as it has

both net positive and net negative charges itself, it attracts both.

An example of this is sodium chloride in water. Water is a good

solvent for many substances. Ionic solids, like salt and polar

molecules, such as sugar and amino acids, readily dissolve in it.

Ionic compounds dissolve in water with a shell of orientated water

molecules around each ion. Whereas soluble organic molecules, like

sugars, dissolve in water due to the formation of hydrogen bonds

between the water molecules and the slightly charge...

... middle of paper ...

...o large particles which would

settle out. The attraction of water by hydrophilic colloids causes

them to absorb water in a process called imbibition. It is this

process that causes dry seeds initially to absorb water.

As we can see water is an extremely complex and diverse molecule with

many different properties. I believe that water is extremely

important, if not one of the most important molecules, to living

organisms. Without it, we, as humans, and all other living organisms

could not survive. I think water is important to us as it performs

many different functions, it acts as a solvent, it insulates, it

provides a habitat for many creatures, it allows aquatic plants to

photosynthesise and many other things already mentioned here.

Therefore we can say that water is very important to all living

organisms.