why is water wet?

Answer 1

Adhesion
as opposed to cohesion which is what makes it form drops.

Adhesion is the property of things sticking to other things.
Combined with it's liquid nature, it feels wet to you because it sticks to you.
Not very hard or taking a shower would be a nightmare but it does stick a bit.
As you rub the sticky liquid off you become dry.

If the liquid were more viscous and stickier for example honey you would not call that WET you would call it sticky.
If the liquid were less sticky and had very high cohesion like for example Mercury you would not call that wet as it would not stick to you at all.
If it were a VERY high viscosity and a VERY high cohesion like silly putty you would definitely not call it WET you would perhaps call it weird.

So to some extent water is WET because that is the word we use to describe what water feels like. :-) See source below.

Answer 2

Difficult question to answer since water isn't always wet! It depends on the surface it is in contact with - it isn't wet to a duck's back!

Pure water isn't actually very good at wetting surfaces because it has a rather high surface tension (~72 N/m in air at 25degC) which is why pond skater's can walk on its surface film and you need to add surfactant (e.g. soap or detergent) to it to improve its wetting of some surfaces. It's surface tension is due to a number of intermolecular forces such as van der Waals and polar interactions.

The condition of maximum wetting occurs when the contact angle of the liquid to the surface being wetted approaches zero and this depends on the chemical compositions of the liquid and surface, the mechanical structure of the surface and the dynamics of the process - e.g. whether the liquid is advancing or receding.

If you watch rain water falling on a dirty window (e.g. while sat on a bus) you will notice that it tends to form ribbons of liquid that run down the glass with a high, bead-like contact angle at the head of the drops that takes an erratic route down the glass avoiding "dry" areas. The water is taking the easiest route down the glass avoiding the more hydrophobic areas having a thin (possibly one molecule thick - so invisible) layer of oil or similar contamination. Meanwhile the tails of the drops are stretched out to long more wetting tails that have lower contact angles. This is because, once the water has been in contact with the surface it wets the cleaner (hydrated silica) areas and causes the water to stick to the surface.

Wetting is a complex process which is very sensitive to the molecules at the surface.

Silicone oils have a low surface tension which is why they are good in products like WD-40 for wetting and penetrating into small gaps and basically getting everywhere!

Answer 3

The fact that water is 'wet' is a mental perception by your brain, you cannot physicallt measure how wet something is, although you can measure the viscosity and surface tension that is assocaited with water - but that is not how much 'wet' it has!

Your skin tells your brain that there is a liquid on your skin, a mixture of the correct properties of water (surface tension etc.) and the fact water is the majority component of your flesh, it begins to soak into it / sticks and rolls off your skin correctly.

Your brain thinks its wet - a mental illusion.

Answer 4

It's all to do with surface tension forces and hydrophilicity (the liking of polar groups for polar groups). Water will cling to any surface that has a relative degree of polarity but will be repelled by low polarity substances. For example polythene (very non polar molecules) will not wet with water but your skin which is covered in peptides (very polar molecules) will be wetted by water.

Answer 5

"Water is a common chemical substance, that is essential to all known forms of life. [1] In typical usage water refers only to its liquid form or state, but the substance also has the solid state, ice, and gaseous state, water vapor"

So in other words, it isn't just wet, it has other states, but as the melting temperature of "water"(H2O) is room temperature, it is generally liquid.


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Answer 6

Because it is a polar compound and thus has an affinity towards a wide range of substances on whose surfaces it sticks to.

Answer 7

The same reason air is dry.

Answer 8

because when u splah around in it ti stick too u by adhesion lol

Answer 9

because the sea weed !!

(v. poor joke I know but my 6 year old nephew told me it yesterday and it still made me laugh!!)

Answer 10

I agree with Olli.