eli5 why is water not a gas if it’s made from hydrogen and oxygen?
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The properties of a compound often have nothing in common with the elements they are made of. Water is exactly this. Other compounds like salt are just as extreme. Sodium Chloride: a reactive metal that bursts into flame on contact with water and a reactive highly poisonous green gas
Water arranges its atoms in such a way as to be “polar” — the hydrogens form an plus-side and the oxygen forms the minus-side.
Because of this water as a molecule is very attracted to other water molecules. They tend to stick together. So water stays liquid much longer than non-polar molecules of the same size (like methane).
Hydrogen and Oxygen molecules are neutral, so they just bounce off each other. In a water molecule, they are arranged such that the water molecule has a positive and a negative side, so the molecules stick together into a liquid.
Water is just what we call H2O when it’s a liquid.
H2O can also be a gas called *steam* or a solid called *ice.*
In fact, pretty much everything can be a solid/liquid/gas is you tweak the temperature and pressure.
For example, liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen are used as rocket fuel.
In water, two hydrogen atoms are bonded to one oxygen atom. H-O-H. From the size and mass of the molecule alone, one would assume that it would be a gas at room temperature. However, the oxygen atom is much more electronegative than the hydrogen atoms, making it so it pulls the electrons participating in the bonds closer to it. This makes the oxygen slightly more negatively charged and the hydrogens slightly positive. Like magnets with north and south poles, the positive and negative poles of different water molecules want to stick together, causing the water molecules to become loosely attached to each other. This makes water liquid at room temperature.
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