If water is a web, is dissolved oxygen the same as H2O2? Can any experimental test distinguish them?
by 
rodschmidt
ANSWERS: 3
-
Water is a collection of water molecules H2O with a very few ions: H+ and OH- When oxygen dissolves it becomes a weakly polar molecule, but remains in one piece. It it so weak that only 8.6mg will dissolve per liter at room temperature. H2O2 is a molecule - it too remains in one piece. In both H2O and H2O2 the molecule itself is held together by covalant bonding. Chemically dissolved oxygen and H2O2 are not related.
-
That's interesting. I wonder who O2, a symmetrical molecule, becomes polar, even weakly. But what about hydrogen bonding ("water is a web") ? What about Linus Pauling's "percent ionic" and "percent covalent" bonds? I was thinking that dissolved O2 will often have a hydrogen bond to each atom, and all it takes is for both those hydrogens to switch their associations (i.e. to become more closely associated with the new O atom than the one it was previously associated to -- i.e. to switch their covalent and hydrogen bonds) and presto, you have H2O2. What's wrong with my reasoning? If H2O2 can have a higher concentration than dissolved oxygen, that's a pretty convincing test that they are not the same thing. If you shake, boil, put rough objects in, or otherwise disturb H2O2, oxygen will come bubbling out.
-
Nonuniform electric field from an H -- induces dipole -- so plausible -- and yet: the O2 molecule is surrounded on all sides by water, there is not just one H nearby, so this effect depends on asymmetry. Statistically, the H (or H's) on one side will be closer than the H (or H's) on the other side, and your effect will be proportional to that difference. There is an energy hill -- yes, and energy hills are surmounted all the time, in the dynamic state that we call equilibrium. (Higher energy states will be less populated, and the occupation ratio is the exponential of the energy difference.) So as I stuff my water full of O2, I will drive the equilibrium toward more H2O2. Another interesting consequence of my reasoning is that, if (when) an O2 becomes H2O2 as I describe, it will create two "OH." radicals.
RELATED QUESTIONS
Copyright 2023, Wired Ivy, LLC