Water is essential to all living and also nonliving things. In biology there are five properties of water, but this essay only talks about three. We're moderates temperature through two properties: its high specific heat and its high heat of vaporization. Water also has the unusual property of being less dense in its solid form, ice, than as a liquid. When it comes to water and its high specific heat, a large input of thermal energy is required to break the many hydrogen bonds, that keep individual water molecules from moving around. So water has a specific heat, basically the amount of heat taken in or putting out by 1 degree celsius. Do to the fact water has a higher specific heat, it heats up more slowly but holds its temperature. This helps organisms with a high water content maintain a much constant internal temperature. So hydrogen bonds absorbs heat when they break and releases heat when they form. A high specific heat not only maintains an organism's body temperature but also the temperature of the organisms environment. Specific heat measures the extent to which a substance resists to changing it temperature when it absorbs or losses heat. Hydrogen bonds must break for water to evaporate. This property is called heat of vaporization. This is the amount of heat required to change 1 gram of a substance from a liquid to a gas. In order for water to become a gas, heat of vaporization has to occur. Evaporation of water from a surface cause cooling of that surface. This is how some organisms dispose excess body heat by evaporative cooling, for example through sweating in humans and many other vertebrates. Water molecules in an ice crystal are spaced relatively far apart because of hydrogen bonding. So suprisngly, this is why ice is less dense then liquid water. Due to the spacing of the ...
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