Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Questions
The question library on water related issues
What is water?
Water is a very important substance, as it makes up the larger part of an organism's
body. But what exactly is water? Inside the body of a human being there is a skeleton,
which makes your body solid and makes sure you can stand up without falling apart.
Water is also a kind of skeleton. It consists of tiny particles, the atoms, just like every
other substance on earth. One of these atoms is called hydrogen and the other is called
oxygen. As you probably know the air that we breathe also contains oxygen. One
particle of water is called a molecule. When lots of water molecules melt together we
can see the water and drink it or use it, for instance to flush a toilet.
gaseous state above 100 C, this is called the boiling point of water, at which water starts
o
to evaporate. The water turns to gas and is then odourless and colourless.
How fast water evaporates depends on the temperature; if the temperature is high, water
will evaporate sooner.
The changes from a liquid to a solid or to a gas are called phase changes. When a
substance such as water changes phase, its physical appearance changes, but not its
chemical properties. This is because the chemical structure remains the same, but the
molecules of which it consists will float a little further apart. In the solid state the water
molecules are fairly close together, but in the liquid state they are a bit further apart. The
water becomes liquid as a result of parting molecules. When water changes from liquid
to gas the molecules will part even further, that is why we cannot detect it.
Why does ice float on water?
When substances freeze, usually the molecules come closer together. Water has an
abnormality there: it freezes below 0 C, but when temperatures goes below 4 C, water
o o
starts to expand again and as a result the density becomes lower. Density of a substance
means the weight in kilograms of a cubic metre of a substance. When two substances
are mixed but do not dissolve in one another, the substance with the lowest density
floats on the other substance. In this case that substance is ice, due to the
decreased density of water.