This goes from the ocean to as simple as a glass of water. Are certain molecules bigger and heavier and therefore sink to the bottom while smaller ones float on top? If there is water in a glass and I pour more in, does the added water push the other to the top, sit on top of the original or is it truly just random and it mixes in and settles where ever it does and there’s no ryhme or reason to it
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No there are no “bigger and smaller” water molecules. They’re all H2O, and atoms have a defined size.
In the ocean, the layers are sorted by density (and therefore by temperature). As water cools, the individual molecules stay the same size but they’re bouncing around less so they pack closer together and the overall liquid gets more dense, therefore heavier, therefore sinks compared to regions of warmer less-dense water. But this is not individual molecules growing, shrinking, rising, or falling.
For your pouring water in a glass question it’s helpful to remember that molecules in a liquid are a lot like a ball pit full of balls. They’re all touching their neighbours, but there’s no attachment between them and they’re free to rotate, slide past each other, whatever. So for pouring water into a glass of water, imagine dumping a big bin of balls into a ball pit from like 50 feet in the air. It’s just random mixing when they land. Some will stay on or near the surface, some will be carried deeper into the mass of balls in the pit. It’s just random collisions determining what ends up where.
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