Water’s main property is that the side with the Hydrogens is slightly positively charged, while the side that is mostly Oxygen is slightly negatively charged. This let’s water stick to itself, the way a magnet sticks to other magnets.
Hydrophobic materials are just ones that *don’t* have any preferred charge at any side. This is usually long chain molecules, because short molecules are very often at least a little charged. You could imagine it as a piece of lead in a sea of magnets.
It’s not that water is specifically repelled from them, just that water attracts more to everything else, including other water.
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