• Question: why is water wet?

    Asked by georgieuplandsbabz to Clare, Dave, Glo, Ozge, Sean on 17 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Gloeta Massie

      Gloeta Massie answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      So outside of my field I think I’ll leave it to these people:

      http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-1725,00.html

    • Photo: Clare Woulds

      Clare Woulds answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      Because it is water! If something has another liquid on it like alcohol for example we don’t actually say that it is wet!

    • Photo: Ozge Ozkaya

      Ozge Ozkaya answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      So the definition of wet is “the condition of being liquid or being covered in liquid” so water is wet by definition!

    • Photo: Dave Sproson

      Dave Sproson answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      If you’re talking about the word, then indeed this is just because for something to be wet, it has to have a water content by definition.

      However, there is a ‘wetness’ property that water has beyond this definition – the fact that water likes to ‘stick’ or ‘cling on’ to things – particularly itself. This is to do with the structure of the water molecule, which makes it positively charges on one end, and negatively charged on the other end. Now, positive and negative charges like to stick together, and because each water molecule has one area of each charge, they can arrange themselves so that they are well stuck together. This is called hydrogen bonding, and is a large part of what gives water its ‘wetness’ property.

    • Photo: Sean Clement

      Sean Clement answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      I’m going to go with the Physicists answer…

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