Unusual Properties of Water

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Water is the third most common molecule in the universe, it is the most abundant substance on earth and the only naturally occurring inorganic liquid. Fifty tons of water passes through our bodies in our lifetimes. If I pour myself a glass of water I could be drinking some of the molecules that passed through the lips of Julio Caesar or Martin Luther King. Furthermore, our bodies are about 60% water so I may in fact be drinking a microscopic amount of those people. Water has several unusual properties, this is due to the way the hydrogen and oxygen atoms are arranged inside a water molecule. This creates an imbalance in the electrons shared by the molecules in the bonds that hold them together, making the oxygen end of each water molecule slightly negatively charged, and the hydrogen end slightly positively charged. Water molecules are polar: like a magnet, they have two different ends or poles. The positive, hydrogen end of one water molecule will attract to the negative, oxygen ends of other water molecules. This is what makes water molecules stick together in their unique way—and that, in turn, explains all their unusual properties that I will explain, along with their importance to our world. The first unusual property of water is in reference to density and freezing. Water is one of a kind as it increases in size as it begins to freeze. This is called the anomalous expansion of water. An example of this is when water is cooled, the molecules start to move closer and lock together. But at a temperature of about 4°C, the molecules are as close as they can get. Also known as water reaching its maximum density. If you keep on cooling it, the molecules rearrange themselves into a slightly more open structure. This means ice is a slightly less dense than freezing water and that's why ice floats on water that's the same temperature. That's extremely important

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