The water states they are present in the earth's crust and in the atmosphere. The hydrosphere consists of exorbitant masses of liquid water, mostly salty, which give the Earth its characteristic bluish surface; and at its white poles, two icy regions where ice proliferates in the form of polar caps.
Regarding its vapors, we see their final development in the condensation of the clouds, when they are already grouped together enough to reflect the sunlight in their typical whitish colors. The clouds, gaseous colloids, release their water content causing rain or precipitation, or freeze into tiny crystals that fall like snow.
When water vapors cool to low altitudes, they coat objects or surfaces in frost, which looks like snow but brighter and more crystalline. On the other hand, in the mist or fog, the water particles are combined in more than one state, since they consist of less dense colloids that blur and whiten the vision of the spectators.
Of all its physical states, the most important is liquid, since it makes up a large part of our body and of all living organisms..
Let's see what the three states of water are:
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As a solid, water can be found as ice, snow, or frost..
The chemical formula of water is HtwoO, and its molecule can be written as H-O-H, whose geometry is angular (boomerang type), capable of forming three hydrogen bonds in the liquid state.
Meanwhile, when the temperature drops and the water cools, its molecules adopt four such bridges, which creates a specific and repetitive spatial arrangement: a crystal of water. This crystal is popularly known as ice. Ice is therefore the solid state of water.
Examples of ice are found in beverage cubes, in water bottles that freeze inside the refrigerator, on the surfaces of swimming pools or fountains exposed to winter, or in the masses of glaciers..
Ice can appear as colorless blocks, but it can turn whitish depending on its impurities or content of occluded air. It can also display pale bluish hues (top image), which represent the most natural way in which light interacts with your crystals..
Thus, the water is not entirely colorless or crystalline: it has an almost imperceptible blue color. This color intensifies according to the concentration and compaction of the water molecules irradiated by the light..
Snow is also ice, but whose crystals are smaller since they were formed from microscopic drops of water, frozen and suspended in the clouds. These crystals or snowflakes agglomerate, fall to the void and end up settling a dusty and white solid on the surfaces.
However, the morphology of snow and its types escapes the meteorological field.
Frost is also another of the best known and most admired ice manifestations. Unlike snow, its crystals originate at low altitudes, as a result of the deposition of water vapors on cold surfaces; the first crystals serve as nuclei for the second, and so on until scaly or bristly patterns form (top image).
Liquid water is the most common on Earth, although the same cannot be said for other planets. We see it on the shores in its effervescent waves, and beyond on the bluish horizon with its undulating crests..
The exorbitant volumes of the oceans allow them to display blue colors, increasingly darker while descending to greater depths where the light is completely scattered and its rays do not reach to illuminate anything..
Fresh water is the liquid that sustains all forms (that is known) of life, since its molecules are contained inside and outside of cells..
The energetic states of water molecules in liquid are more random and heterogeneous than those found in ice: hydrogen bonds are constantly being created and broken, due to the liquid water molecules moving from one side to the other..
From liquid water, the existence of regions of low and high densities is studied; that is, areas of the liquid where the molecules are more clustered than in others. Vitreous and super viscous water is even referred to as liquid phase transitions under high pressures..
Water when its H molecules evaporatetwoOr they pass into the gaseous state or vapor phase: water vapor. These vapors are colorless, but if their concentration is high they can be seen as a white smoke, characteristic when boiling cauldrons with water, in hot springs, or in the boiling jets of geysers..
Once the water vapors rise to the sky, they begin to cool, beginning to form microscopic drops of water that remain suspended in the air; the set of all of them is known as clouds, large enough to reflect all the colors of sunlight, and mixed with other particles present in the atmosphere.
If an ice is heated, liquid water will originate, and this in turn water vapor. This is so at atmospheric pressure; However, this pressure can be manipulated as well as the temperature to subject the water to hostile conditions, such as those found in the Cosmos, especially inside icy planets such as Uranus and Neptune..
Water under pressures (in the order of hundreds of GPa) and overwhelming temperatures (thousands of degrees Celsius), acquires physical states whose characteristics no longer coincide with conventional ice and its polymorphs, as well as with liquid and its vapors..
For example, one of these states is ice XVIII, which, more than ice, is a superionic solid with metallic characteristics; it carries protons inside it instead of electrons. It is believed that if it could be obtained in appreciable quantities, it would look like hot black crystals: black ice.
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