How would water fall when raining if water wasn't a polar molecule?

Question

It's for biology and my teacher told me because of water being polar when it rains it comes down as droplets...He wants to know what water would fall in if it wasn't polar.

Answer 1

Falling rain would still fall the same way because of gravity.

Answer 2

Well lets assume that this non polar water has the ability to evaporate. (most non polar molecules don't evaporate very well so technically if water was not polar then it wouldnt even evaporate) It would probably drip down like oil. (ill use oil in this example because oil is not polar) I don't know much about what clouds are made of but Im sure clouds are made out of frozen droplets of ... um... water. Rain falls when these droplets get too big and heavy. Most oil freezes at a very low temperature (think of cars in the winter). Im not sure if it is cold enough up there so oil could freeze into droplets to make clouds in the atmosphere so if water werent polar it wouldnt rain and we would have no clouds. To take it further, plants and animals would probably die unless their cell membranes completely change in their chemical make up. Water needs to get pass the cell membranes to enter any cell in a plant or animal. If water were not polar, it wouldnt be able to do that efficiently.

Answer 3

In very small drops I think, since its superficial tension would be much lower.

That's a good guess anyway =)

----something else----

a drop of water has about 0,03 mL of water. It is bigger than a drop of ethanol 96%, which has about 0,025 mL. That happens because ethanol is less polar than water. We can say that, because the attaction between the molecules is weaker, the molecules in the liquid-air interface do not have the 'strenght' to 'hold' a larger amound of liquid without splitting.

Answer 4

haven't you ever heard of newtons third law of motion "every action has an equal and/or opposite reaction" water being polar has nothing to do with rain falling, it all has to do with the gravity that the earth as and the gravitational acceleration of objects on earth (9.81 m/s^2). water being polar just means that it mixes with most other substances ( i think this is correct...)

Answer 5

but water is polar!

Answer 6

still got gravity?