One H2O Molecule

[chef]

Greetings!

 

I have a few questions toward my better understanding of one molecule of H2O (water) as follows:

What is the quantitative measurement of one (H2O) molecule of water? .........

Is one molecule of water visible to the naked eye? .........

Anticipating that the measurement of one molecule of water will be smaller than my everyday use of measurements - where does that measurement compare to one eighth of a teaspoon? .........

Do examples of one molecule of water exist in nature or does the smallest natural evidence of water in nature consist of multi-molecules of water? .........

Thank you!

[exchemist]

3 hours ago, chef said:

Greetings!

 

I have a few questions toward my better understanding of one molecule of H2O (water) as follows:

What is the quantitative measurement of one (H2O) molecule of water? .........

Is one molecule of water visible to the naked eye? .........

Anticipating that the measurement of one molecule of water will be smaller than my everyday use of measurements - where does that measurement compare to one eighth of a teaspoon? .........

Do examples of one molecule of water exist in nature or does the smallest natural evidence of water in nature consist of multi-molecules of water? .........

Thank you!

You don't say what quantitative measurement of a molecule you have in mind, so that can't be answered. 

One molecule is not visible to the naked eye. Incidentally, regardless of how good your eyes are, light cannot resolve objects smaller than the wavelength of the light, because it will just diffract round them instead of being reflected. The wavelength of visible light is in the range 380-750nm, whereas a single water molecule is about 0.2nm across.  

Taking one tsp to be 5ml, 1/8 tsp contains approx 2 x 10²² molecules. In words that is twenty thousand  billion billion. 

There is no reason why there should not be single molecules of water floating around in all sorts of places, but we would find it very hard to detect individual molecules as they are so small. So evidence of water, which is what you ask about, generally relies on an aggregation of molecules of some kind.   

 

[studiot]

3 hours ago, chef said:

Greetings!

 

I have a few questions toward my better understanding of one molecule of H2O (water) as follows:

1)  What is the quantitative measurement of one (H2O) molecule of water? .........

2) Is one molecule of water visible to the naked eye? .........

3) Anticipating that the measurement of one molecule of water will be smaller than my everyday use of measurements - where does that measurement compare to one eighth of a teaspoon? .........

4) Do examples of one molecule of water exist in nature or does the smallest natural evidence of water in nature consist of multi-molecules of water? .........

Thank you!

Good morning and welcome.

Thank you for your polite enquiry +1 for encouragement.

Going from your handle and use of a teaspoon for measurement you are not a scientist so I will try to put my answers in non scientific context for you.
I have therefore numbered your question as above.

 

1.   There are about 600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 water molecules in 18 grammes of water so the each one has a very small weight.
    
2. No one molecule is very small - about 0.000000000002 metres across. 
   This is way to small to see with the naked eye.
   It is even about 100000 times too small to see with the most powerful optical microscope.
    
3. You may have guessed that one molecule is too small to measure out by teaspoon.
   In fact there are about 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 water molecules in a one eighth teaspoon so you wouldn't notice just one on the spoon.
    
4. Water can exist i9s solid (ice), liquid or gas (water vapour or dry steam). In the solid or liquid states you would not find isolated molecules, but in the gaseous state there are generally isolated from each other in a body of water vapour. They would not be isolated in any water droplets contained in that vapour (or wet steam).

 

It is good to see someone enquiring about things around them so keep the questions coming.