Question

HELPPPPPPP

Describe some of the properties of water, and explain how the structure of water is responsible for these properties.

Answer 1

Well, there's a lot to be said about water lol.

well let's first think of what comes to mind.

In water there are two atoms of hydrogen bonded to one oxygen atom.

Oxygen has 6 valence electrons
Hydrogen has a single electron.

oxygen needs 2 electrons to fill its octet and have 8 electrons in its outer shell.

now it gets these electrons from hydrogen. the hydrogen atoms each form a bond to the oxygen where 2 electrons are shared.

remember covalent means sharing of electrons.

hydrogen shares an electron with oxygen and vice versa.

but there is another concept called electronegativity. oxygen is more electronegative than hydrogen meaning that, it has more protons that pull onto the electrons, or greater Zeff.

oxygen wants to have those electrons more so it hogs onto them more than hydrogen does. what happens is that it creates polarity in the molecule.

let's draw the molecule out.

You can see here the two bonds formed 1 with each hydrogen and the two lone pairs right? well

when we draw out molecules it's important to put in the lone pairs.

Think about this: lone pairs repel each other and other atoms too that are bonded to the central atom. to reduce this repulsion we want to make sure that we place the groups as far away as possible from these lone pairs. but the more lone pairs we have the result is our groups to move closer together and that affects the shape of our molecule.

In water we have two lone pairs so the molecule will be bent.



now another important thing about water is that it has a very high boiling point higher than usual.

there is a concept called hydrogen bonding where the lone pair of electrons on the oxygen bonds with a nearby hydrogen on another water molecule. so in other words water molecules can form bonds with each other. or intermolecular forces. inter means that these forces happen between molecules, so it's like bonding between molecules.

we need to put a lot more energy into water to break these bonds.