The Importance of Water.

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Thomas

Bailey

The Importance of Water

Water plays a huge role in animals, plants and the surroundings. Without water there would be no life on the planet. The importance of water as a medium of life springs from four of its properties, freezing, heat capacity or thermal properties, surface tension and its solvent properties.

        Water is most dense at 4° but freezes at 0°. This is a very important factor in the creation of life. If a lake or ocean was to freeze, the ice would float on top of the surface; this allows single celled organisms, fish and other aqueous creatures to survive underneath the ice. If water wasn’t most dense at 4° the whole lake, or lots of the ocean would freeze over and kill the life. The polar ice caps float above the water, if they sunk the warmer water underneath the surface would slowly melt the ice and flood the planet, thus destroying most mammals on the earth. If it wasn’t for water freezing from the top first, then the bottom later then organisms living towards to the bottom of the body of the water wouldn’t have survived.

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        Water has a very high heat capacity (heat capacity is defined as the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of I gram by 1°C) then many other liquids. This is highly important because it can retain its heat for longer in say, cooler temperatures. This is significant because animals and plants cannot tolerate wide variation with temperature. Another biochemical importance of this is that the temperature range in witch chemical reactions can take place is very narrow. The high heat capacity of water makes it ideal for keeping the temperature constant, thus making it ideal for plants ...

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