Water

1164 Words3 Pages

The world as we know it would not be the same without water. If every lake, river, and ocean were emptied and filled with something other than water, life itself would not exist. This is due to water’s unique molecular structure and arrangement due to its bonds. Water is a molecule made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom: H2O. The hydrogen atoms have a partial positive charge and the oxygen atom has a partial negative charge. In water’s molecular structure, there are two unshared pairs of electrons, which cause the hydrogen atoms to bend downward, causing water’s bent tetrahedral shape. The kind of bond that holds water together is called a hydrogen bond. A hydrogen bond is formed between electronegative atoms of one molecule and hydrogens that are bound to electronegative atoms of another molecule. The hydrogen bonds in water form between the oxygen of one water molecule and a hydrogen atom of another water molecule. This molecular structure is what allows water to possess the distinctive properties that it does.
One of water’s most important properties is its polarity, which is due to the unequal sharing of electrons in the covalent bond. This causes water to be neutral as a whole, but with one end, the hydrogen side, positively charged, and the other end, the oxygen side, negatively charged. Each end is attracted to the opposite charged end of another water molecule. This, in turn, is what is responsible for the stickiness, or cohesion, between the molecules. This cohesion of water molecules causes water’s property of capillary action, which is its ability of water to move upward in small spaces. Examples of this is in plants, where the capillary action allows water to move up fibres of a plant for it to surviv...

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...er dissolve. An unsaturated solution is one that contains less quantity of solute than what can be dissolved at room temperature. When more solute is added into an unsaturated solution, the solute dissolves. Lastly, a supersaturated solution is a solution that contains the maximum amount of solute at a raised temperature. When more solute is added into a supersaturated solution, crystals will form.
Water makes up about 70% of the earth and about 77% of the human body. 96.5% of the water on earth is found in oceans, 2.5% is fresh water in lakes and rivers, and the final 1% is other saline water. Clearly, water, if not the most, is one of the most important things on our planet. Water is essential to all forms of life, and without it, there would be no trees, no animals, no people, no earth, and no life. So, what would the earth be like without water? Nonexistent.

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