• Question: How can nitrogen and oxygen make water,it dosn’t make sense?

    Asked by Curious to Souvik, Sabine, Maria, John, Faye, Armin on 21 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Maria McNamara

      Maria McNamara answered on 21 Nov 2019:


      Do you mean hydrogen plus oxygen? If so, is the confusion here because you are taking two elements which occur naturally in isolation as gases, but when combined, form a liquid? All natural materials are either solid, liquid or gas at a given pressure and temperature. It just so happens that water is liquid over much of the Earth’s surface given our surface temperatures (average 14 deg C) and pressures. This is one of the features which makes our planet unique in the solar system (other bodies in the solar system have water, but it’s present as ice at the surface). Water is a pretty special liquid as far as liquids go because of the strong interactions between water molecules – we call this hydrogen- (or H-) bonding. This is why water has a high surface tension and why ice floats on water.

Comments