eli5: If Oxygen is a gas, and Hydrogen is a gas, how come they make a liquid?

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I don’t even know.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Because of how they interact.

Hydrogen gas (H2) doesn’t interact with itself much. Oxygen gas (O2) also doesn’t have many self-interactions.

However, water (H2O) does. Because of how the atoms line up (specifically, that they don’t – the hydrogen atoms are at an angle to each other relative the oxygen atom); water is “polar” – it’s like a small magnet. Because of this, it connects to itself. This connection is strong enough to raise the melting and boiling temperature of water far above the same temperatures for hydrogen and oxygen.

More broadly, the melting/freezing and boiling/condensation temperature of anything is based on how strong the broader connections are. Things that turn to gas at low temperatures don’t have strong connections between molecules; while things that stay solid at high temperatures are that way because they have much stronger connections.

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