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Oil is less dense than water

While certainly true, and part of it, it isn't the whole story. If this were the case, there wouldn't be many of the solutions that we know and love each day (think of beer...ethanol has a density of about 0.8, water is 1...how can it be mixed?).

The main component for this is that there are significantly different forces holding the water molecules to other water molecules, and oil molecules to other oil molecules. Water is very polar (has ends with unequal electron distribution, a slight charge), and oil is non-polar: all the electrons are evenly spread-out. The water molecules are attracted to each other by this separated charge, the oil molecules are attracted to each other due to the lack of separated charge, but they are not attracted to each other. That's where the density comes into it!

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15y ago

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