Water is one of the strangest substances in the universe, and many people will be surprised by this because, from a human perspective, it seems perfectly normal that we have plenty of it.
But imagine all the weird things we're going to figure out about the universe in the future! From a human point of view, water is boring compared to undiscovered scientific oddities! But for all that, H2O is a strange molecule. Maybe if we were to talk to intelligent aliens one day, and we explained to them about our abundant water, they would say, "Oh my God, what happened!"
Here are some explanations for why water is such a strange molecule.
When water freezes, the space between its molecules expands, causing it to float as a liquid. Water is the only known natural substance with this property. Think about it. Why does a solid matter float on top of a liquid? Normally, when a substance freezes, its molecules contract closer together, not expand 39bet-xsmb-xổ số tây ninh-xổ số binh phước-xổ số binh dương-xổ số đồng nai. This anomaly shaped the Earth as we see it today. Liquid water seeps into the boulder, and when it freezes, it has enough force to break it down. Rock erosion over time is a powerful force and a major source of the ground soil we take for granted.
The high surface tension of liquid water allows some small animals, such as insects, to cross its surface. These animals don't fall deep because the surface tension of water relative to other liquids is enormous.
Cohesiveness and cohesion of water. According to #2, water has an incredible ability to stick to itself, and life on Earth has evolved to take advantage of it. Water consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, hence the chemical name H2O. These two hydrogen atoms are attracted to the oxygen atoms around the water molecule. Because of this, water can defy natural gravity in a fundamental way. For example, the water in our blood keeps nutrients and oxygen flowing through all the smallest vessels. In a similar way, water rushes out of the soil and reaches the top of all living plants. Without this phenomenon, radiators, pipes, irrigation systems and water pipes would not be so efficient.
Water is a universal solvent. It not only sticks to itself, but it sticks to and dissolves everything it touches. Water is such a good solvent that it is almost impossible to get a 100 percent pure sample in the laboratory. At least, it partially dissolves everything it touches. Ordinary salts, which consist of crystals of sodium chloride, dissolve easily in water because hydrogen bonds pull the sodium and chlorine atoms out of the crystal, leaving them free to float in the liquid. Almost all known chemical and mineral compounds dissolve to some extent in water. Because of this, water is one of the most reactive and corrosive chemicals we know of.
Water is also important to life as we know it. This is because water dissolves many types of nutrients and other elements and then carries them into our bodies. The basic molecules of life -- DNA, proteins, the molecules that make up cell membranes, etc. -- cannot operate without water. Evolution has shaped these complex molecules so that some are hydrophilic and can easily mix with water, while others are hydrophobic and avoid water. The billions of protein molecules in your body can only do their job if they fold into the right shape, because their interaction with water pushes them into the right three-dimensional format.
Without water, life would not exist. We happen to have an example of a planet that could support life, and that's Earth. The vastness of the universe also leads us to believe that planets rich in liquid water must be exceptionally rare. But maybe in the future, we'll find other planets with similar amounts of liquid water. Maybe then, we'll realize that as strange as water is, it definitely wasn't as unusual in the universe as we think it is today.
Steve touched on some of the main points, but there are two more lesser-known, but important features.
Great changes in the electrical conductivity of water. You always hear that water is a good conductor, but if it's distilled water, it's not. Even more damaging is the distillation of deionized water. By a factor of thousands. What this means for life, I think, is that organic chemistry, which is highly dependent on ionic potentials, wouldn't work if water wasn't so versatile in its conductivity.
Steam is thinner than dry air. This only makes the weather possible as we know it. If water vapor were heavier than dry air, there would be only fog in the ocean. This would be disastrous for the water cycle on Earth, where there is little movement of the moisture mass over the continents, so there is no weathering (which brings all the useful nutrients to the oceans, including but not only salt), and therefore no life on land (and possibly no life in the oceans due to the lack of weathering).
I will add a third point, which relates to the well-known fact that water is less dense than water. This is said not to kill life in the river. This also means that it prevents the heat of the water from being released into the atmosphere. This is very important in the Snowball Earth hypothesis. The ice sheet is lighter than water, preventing the ocean from freezing completely, effectively isolating it.