• Question: Why is water wet?

    Asked by anon-267369 on 5 Nov 2020.
    • Photo: Bradley Young

      Bradley Young answered on 5 Nov 2020:

      Water molecules are polar (meaning they have regions of opposite charge) making them quite sticky on some surfaces like skin. Water is also not very viscous (it flows easily). These two properties make it feel wet

    • Photo: Adrien Chauvet

      Adrien Chauvet answered on 5 Nov 2020:

      Because your skin likes it!
      If your skin was more hydrophobic (not interacting with water), you would never get wet!

    • Photo: Daisy Shearer

      Daisy Shearer answered on 8 Nov 2020:

      Wetness is basically how well a liquid sticks to the surface of a solid. So I guess in this sense water isn’t wet in of itself but it certainly makes things wet! Water behaves like this because it has lots of hydrogen bonds which have strong cohesive forces so it spreads out to cover the surface but also some adhesive force sticking it to the surface.

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