Why Is Water Wet?
Water is normal in our everyday lives, but it’s also very weird
Water, water everywhere
Water is so normal that it’s easy not to think about it.
It’s a liquid at room temperature. It’s transparent. It’s odourless.
We drink it, wash in it, swim in it.
We irrigate our fields with it, cool our factories with it, float ships on it. We skitter under the nearest shelter to avoid it when it falls from the clouds.
It can put out fires. It can dissolve salt, sugar and a whole number of other things in it.
We certainly can’t live without it. The majority of molecules in your body are water — far more than any other kind. And yet if immersed in it for too long, we drown and die.
H2O
It’s possibly the most famous chemical formula there is: H2O.
In chemical drawing, there’s a convention that oxygen atoms are red and hydrogens white.
For every atom of oxygen, there are two hydrogen atoms.
