This unique property of water keeps Earth, the water planet, habitable. Because of this, ice floats and water at 4 oC sinks, which keeps the oceans liquid and prevents them from freezing solid from the bottom up. As water solidifies into ice, the molecules must move apart in order to fit into the crystal lattice, causing water to expand and become less dense as it freezes. Water is densest at 4☌ and is less dense above and below that temperature. Hydrogen bonds allow the molecules in liquid water to sit close together. The polarity of water creates a special type of weak bonding called hydrogen bonds. The fact that water is attracted to itself leads to another important property, one that is extremely rare in the natural world-the liquid form is denser than the solid form. Hydrogen bonding between water molecules. Cohesion is responsible for creating surface tension, which various insects use to walk on water by distributing their weight across the surface. Water is also attracted to itself, a property called cohesion, which leads to water’s most common form in the air, a droplet. Polarity allows water molecules to stick to other substances. Resembling a battery or a magnet, the molecule’s positive-negative architecture leads to a whole suite of unique properties. This atomic arrangement, with the positively charged hydrogens on one side and negatively charged oxygen on the other side, gives the water molecule a property called polarity. The two hydrogen atoms are separated by an angle of about 105 degrees, and both are located to one side of the oxygen atom. The water molecule consists of two hydrogen atoms covalently bonded to one oxygen atom arranged in a specific and important geometry. Several special properties make water an especially unique substance, and integral to the production of sediments and sedimentary rock. It also is a weathering and erosion agent, producing the grains that become detrital sedimentary rock. It is one of the main agents involved in creating the minerals in chemical sedimentary rock. Water plays a role in the formation of most sedimentary rock. 5.1 The Unique Properties of WaterĪ model of a water molecule, showing the bonds between the hydrogen and oxygen. Even though sedimentary rocks can form in drastically different ways, their origin and creation have one thing in common, water. This is because the majority of the Earth’s surface is made up of sedimentary rocks and their common predecessor, sediments. Sedimentary rock and the processes that create it, which include weathering, erosion, and lithification, are an integral part of understanding Earth Science.
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