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The phrase "breaking the bonds which hold water molecules together" can be interpreted two different ways. 1) Breaking the covalent bonds that hold individual
by Turing_Machine 3y ago
The phrase "breaking the bonds which hold water molecules together" can be interpreted two different ways.
1) Breaking the covalent bonds that hold individual water molecules together, preventing them from splitting into two hydrogen and one oxygen atom. That's clearly not true.
2) Breaking the hydrogen bonds that stick one water molecule to another, keeping the water in liquid form. That's true.
In any case, it's poorly phrased.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoIs that right? Molecules with no polarity can still form liquids. It happens all the time; we call those liquids "hydrophobic" (or, most commonly, we call them "oils"). The hydrogen bonds aren't what's keeping the water in liquid form. Cooking oil, notably, will not evaporate the way water will -- if you spill it somewhere, the oil will mostly just stay wherever you left it until you clean it up -- but my understanding was that this is because oil molecules are huge and heavy while water molecules are tiny.
- thedanbob 3y agoThere are a number of forces that allow molecules to form liquids/solids, the hydrogen bond just happens to be the one that acts on water. If my memory serves it's the London force for non-polar molecules.