What are the chemical properties of water?

Answer 1

Water has many unusual properties that are critical for life: it is a good solvent and has high surface tension. Fresh water has its greatest density at 4°C: it becomes less dense as it freezes or heats up. As a stable, polar molecule prevalent in the atmosphere, it plays an important atmospheric role as an absorber of infrared radiation, crucial in the atmospheric greenhouse effect. Water also has an unusually high specific heat, which plays many roles in regulating global climate.

Water is a very good solvent and dissolves many types of substances, such as various salts and sugar, and facilitates their chemical interaction, which aids complex metabolisms.

Some substances, however, do not mix well with water, including oils and other hydrophobic substances. Cell membranes, composed of lipids and proteins, take advantage of this property to carefully control interactions between their contents and external chemicals. This is facilitated somewhat by the surface tension of water.

Water drops are stable due to the high surface tension of water. This can be seen when small quantities of water are put onto a nonsoluble surface such as glass: the water stays together as drops. This property plays a key role in plant transpiration.

A simple but environmentally important and unique property of water is that its common solid form, ice, floats on the liquid. This solid phase is less dense than liquid water, due to the geometry of the strong hydrogen bonds which are formed only at lower temperatures. For almost all other substances and for all other 11 uncommon phases of water ice except ice-XI, the solid form is more dense than the liquid form. Fresh water is most dense at 4°C, and will sink by convection as it cools to that temperature, and if it becomes colder it will rise instead. This reversal will cause deep water to remain warmer than shallower freezing water, so that ice in a body of water will form first at the surface and progress downward, while the majority of the water underneath will hold a constant 4°C. This effectively insulates a lake floor from the cold.

Answer 2

1. Water has 2 atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, hence an molecular weight of 18.
2. It has high dielectric constant and hence is a polar compound.
3. It easily dissolves organic compounds.
4. It has hydrogen bonding between its constituents.
5. Pure water has pH value of 7.
6. Density of water is highest at 4 degree Celsius.

Answer 3

H2O is water

the H stands for Hydrogen, the O stands for Oxygen and the 2 means there are 2 oxygen. hydrogen, 2 oxygen.

Answer 4

Water is two hydrogens connected to one oxygen. Water is neither acidic or basic (ph of 7). Water also dissolves most substances.

Answer 5

Point blank... 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen. But on micro... depends on where you got your water.

Answer 6

Two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen

Answer 7

H2O
that's two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen

Answer 8

Hello Michele,

Your question is a good one and reading the answers we learned a lot (look to the Kanailo’s answer, it is nice). But, our mind’s evolution increases when, more than knowing facts and data, we try to think about the roots and means of natural’s phenomena. If you are not interested at being a scientific/philosopher, does not loose your time reading the following. Can you imagine the benefits that this question may bring to humanity? Here, for instance, arise the following questions: why is there water? Why water is so important to our life? Why water is a chemical agent, what is chemistry?

Matrix’s Theory suggests surprising news about water, which is fuel for to think and developing our scientific rationalization. They are:

1)Which are the origins of water? - Water (and liquid state) is a product resulting from the entropic process of our astronomic system. Our galaxy needs begins to die for to give us the life. The oxygen and hydrogen atoms were choose here because they have some properties closed to our astronomic system (in Matrix’s Theory we have the explanations but they are too extensive). The oxygen atom with its atomic number 8 is an atomic system that mimics a matrix of astronomic systems (astronomical number 8) and the hydrogen atom with its atomic number 1 is an atomic system that mimics each piece/accessory (astronomical number 1). So, water is composed by a copy of a natural system at the center (oxygen atom) surrounded by two organs of other copy (the hydrogen atoms), going to perform a kind of blastula which is an effort from astronomic systems trying to reproduce itself. Water is the tool used for a fetus of a system with two organs trying to build its missing 6 organs.

2)What is the importance of water? - There is chemistry only at the organic/biological level of Nature. There are no chemistry involved at the internal dynamics of astronomic and atoms systems. Why? The first point is that atoms and astronomic systems have only solid and gaseous states of matter, they have no liquid state. So, it is logical we think that chemistry reactions appear in Nature only when appears the liquid state. And water is the first most abundant/important liquid state. Water is the intermediate tool used for transformation of only-physics systems to biological systems. So, if Nature has no produced water, the macroevolution was stopped at astronomic systems, never reaching the biological/life level. Thanks God for the water!

3)Why water is a good solvent? - Since that water is a tool (the Nature’s hammer) used in the next step of macroevolution from astronomic systems to biological systems, it is necessary for to broken the usual atom’s organization at primitive land for to capture the right material and organize them at other way. One oxygen atom surrounded by two hydrogen means a natural system at fetus state, it needs to grow, it needs matter that are inside external atoms for to build the organs/piece, and for to capture that matter it needs to broke the systemic organization. Solvent means dissolution of old structures and its goal are to prepare the organization of new structures.

Immediate useful scientific experiment from our meditation about water:


We need to repeat the Stanley Miller experience, producing glycine, alanine and alpha-amino-n-butyric acid from the mixture of methane, ammonia, water, and hydrogen. After that and with those products at hand, we need to mix them with other kinds of atoms in a solution rich of helium, the next natural evolutionary step with its atomic number 2. If the theory is right, we may get other kinds of amino-acids and organic compounds. After that we need to change the helium by lithium (atomic number 3), and following this sequence, it the theory is right, we will get a living system. At least, we will have a kind of ‘stem-organic compounds”, which can be used for new drugs and cure diseases.

Answer 9

H2O, for more details, you can refer to the website below:

Answer 10

actually its not h2o its H2 and O