What makes an oil an oil? How is it different from any number of water suspensions? What do olive oil and, say, motor oil have in common that makes them both oils?
In: Chemistry
The key part is polarity. Oil is made up of non-polar molecules, meaning the molecules have an overall neutral charge instead of a positive and negative at either end of the molecule due to how their molecular bonds are arranged. Polar liquids like water are the opposite. Water molecules have a positive charge at one end and a negative at the other.
Nonpolar liquids like oil therefore can’t be mixed with polar liquids like water because the electrical forces of their molecules repulse each other instead of separating and mixing.
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