Why can water dissolve in many substances?

Answer 1

Water is considered as a universal solvent.
Water is so versatile that no other solvent can match it.
Water dissolves all polar molecules however non-polar molecules are slightly soluble.

Answer 2

like our human skin it has a special type of wax like substance on it so water does not actually go "into" our skin.

Water is called a universal solvent and over time will dissolve most things due to the the polarity of the water molecule.

Answer 3

There's probably a tonne of answers to this, but I'll just give an overview of what comes to mind.

Firstly, water only tends to dissolve polar solutes. Something like Hexane will just sit on top of water if you pour a significant amount in, because it isn't polar.

Why? Well, water (ignore the surface, for the sake of simplicity) is pretty disordered inside. We have a few H-Bonds coming and going but each H2O molecule is rotating, vibrating and translating around so nothing is permanent.

If I put some Hexane in, the water cannot H-bond to it and so forms a sort of cage around it, with very ordered waters. In fact it's VERY close to a thin sheet of ice.

This means a loss of entropy, which is bad...but an increase in enthalpy (making H-Bonds) which is better than losing a tonne of enthalpy by allowing H2O near the hexane and getting less H-Bonding.

Anyhow, polar solvents don't have the same problem. You can usually make H-Bonds (via nitrogens, oxygens) to polar solutes so we maintain our enthalpy and since there's other molecules preventing a lattice structure, the solution becomes more disordered, meaning an increase in entropy...which is good.

Meaning our solution becomes more thermodynamically favourable. And that's just what dissolving is.

Water LIKES having these things floating around in it with no particular grouping or structure.

What happens if I drop some fat into water? It globs together, maybe even seperates out. These are ORDERED structures and you loose a lot of entropy that way but it's all the solution can do to preserve its enthalpy (and separation looses less entropy than globs due to lower surface area).

So we can see that water isn't all too fussy, it can dissolve most polar things because it...and there's a LOT of them. But equally, there are just as many things it will not dissolve. Plus, it's a sliding scale. We use thermodynamics to reason (and calculate, if you like) how soluble something will be in water.

Answer 4

Water is a polar molecule, that is one that contains both positively and negatively charged sides to it. While these charges are not "formal," like the ones on electrons and protons (components of atoms), they are quite strong. The strong charges interact strongly with other charged substances. Many substances in nature are charged; for example, salts are comprised of two (or more) substances with formal charges. When a substance such as a salt is introduced to water, the polar nature of the water allows it to pull the charged parts of the salt apart, dissolving it.

The act of dissolution is essentially the water breaking apart bonds between molecules/atoms of a given substance by interfering with those bonds. In the case above, the interference is mediated by replacing the ordered, structural bonds between ions in a salt with the unordered, stochastic interactions of freely moving liquid water.

As the water is heated, and the movement of the water is "quicker", the water is better at dissolving things.

Answer 5

Water can dissolve so many different substances because water has an unequel distribution of positive and negative charges(polar molecule) which attract many ions and other polar molecules.

Answer 6

water cant dissolve hydrophilic substances, fats, or oils

Answer 7

Water is the 'unversal' solvent because of it's polar covalent bonds which cause allow it to weakly attract negative and postive portions of most solutes.