Eli5 – how can water be made of hydrogen and oxygen?

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Liquid water – made from two types of gas. Makes no sense to me, whatsoever. Water seems to be one of the strangest substances and we completely take it for granted that, apparently, it’s made of gas!

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Gas is just a phase of matter. Hydrogen and oxygen are both solid at certain temperatures and pressures, then liquid, then gas. It’s just that the liquid and solid phases aren’t something you normally come in contact with. But if you’ve ever seen an orbital rocket launch, you’ve seen a tank full of liquid oxygen, and possibly liquid hydrogen (Shuttle and SLS for example).

Then when they join to create H2O, the resulting molecule has completely different chemical properties than either, so its temperatures for the three phases change.

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