Water is extremely important for us and the Earth. If it wasn’t for waters many anomalies, then there would be no life on Earth. Many compounds are covalently bonded and share electrons such as water, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, ozone, methane and ammonia. A huge majority of covalent compounds are gas at room temperature. Water is obviously an exception being liquid at room temperature therefore an anomaly already. One molecule of water is made up of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms. The placement of the two hydrogens means that it can hydrogen bond thus meaning being a liquid at room temperature. As the diagram below shows. The hydrogen atoms are both on the same side of the oxygen atom. The angle of 104.5 degrees is the fundamental part …show more content…
The side with hydrogens is slightly positively charged and the oxygen being slightly negatively charged therefore making it polar. Even though the overall charge is 0 there is still some attraction between the water molecules through hydrogen bonds. Hydrogen bonds are very weak and about 1.97 Angstroms whereas a covalent bond is 0.96 Angstroms in comparison. Water molecules have a lot of these hydrogen bonds and as a result the bonds collectively are very strong. This allows water to have a high heat capacity as it will take a lot of thermal energy to break the bonds. These bonds also enable the water to have a high latent heat of vaporisation. The colder the temperature of the water the more hydrogen bonds there are. As you can see the structure of how these molecules bond has a big space in the middle of the molecules. This is one of the main reason ice floats on water – a rare phenomenon where one substances solid state is less dense than the liquids. The hydrogen bonds collective strength also mean that the water has surface tension therefore allowing some insects to be able to walk on