Education for Sustainable Living, Environmental Respect, and Celebrating the Quality of Life.

Chemically and Physically Speaking, What is Water?  

        Water is a chemically unique substance composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.  What makes water unique is its hydrogen bonding shown below.  Unbonded electrons of the oxygen atom are attracted to the partially positive hydrogen atoms of the molecule.  This makes water attracted to other water molecules and imparts to water the unusual properties like high boiling point, low freezing point, high surface tension and related properties.

 This picture of guttation    water shows water's characteristic high surface tension.  

         Because of water's unique structure, it has a tremendous capacity to dissolve substances, which is in part why we have so many water quality problems with our drinking water.          

        For more information on water chemistry, please check out Dr. Jill Granger's site on the chemistry of water.  For more information on the physical properties of water, check out this site.  Finally if you want to know more about where all this water we have on Earth came from, check out Dr. George Lenz's page.  .  

Putting knowledge to work with the people of Maine

A Member of the University of Maine System
Last Modified: 09/13/2006
These pages are currently being maintained from the
Water Quality Office, University of Maine Cooperative Extension.
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