Water and Ice and their Molecules and Crystals

Reported by:Francis Dwight T. Maglinte

What is Water?

• Water is very important for life. We need water to drink, to wash our hands, to cook, to water plants and many other things.

• What other important uses for water do we have?

• As water is boiled, kinetic energy causes the hydrogen bonds to break completely and allows water molecules to escape into the air as gas (steam or water vapor).

• When water freezes, water molecules form a crystalline structure maintained by hydrogen bonding.

• Solid water, or ice, is less dense than liquid water.• Ice is less dense than water because the orientation of

hydrogen bonds causes molecules to push farther apart, which lowers the density.

• The low density of ice , an anomaly, causes it to float at the surface of liquid water, such as an iceberg or the ice cubes in a glass of water. In lakes and ponds, ice forms on the surface of the water creating an insulating barrier that protects the animals and plant life in the pond from freezing.

Water Molecule

Water is a Chemical!?• Indeed! Water is one of our most plentiful chemicals.

Its chemical formula, H20, is probably the most well known of all chemical formulas.

• The formula H20 tells us that one molecule of water is comprised of 2 atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen bonded together. The bonds which hold the hydrogen and oxygen together are called covalent bonds - they are very strong.

• Let's look at a picture of a molecule of water: In this picture the two hydrogens are represented by white spheres and the oxygen by a red sphere.