When cleaning, cooking, washing we all use water as a solvent/agent. What makes it so special ?
In: Chemistry
Water is polar, meaning one part of the molecule is more positively charged and the other is more negatively charged. This makes it interact very well with charged (or other polar) things, making it good at dissolving them.
There are other polar solvents, like ethanol, that can, to an extent, dissolve many of the same things water can.
The reason we think of water as a near universal solvent is because it is both very polar and very common.
That said, water is pretty useless at dissolving non-polar things like grease. This is why we have non-polar solvents as well as surfactants (i.e., soap). Surfactants are molecules that have a polar and non-polar end which helps water dissolve non-polar molecules.
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