• Question: What happens to water if you compress it more and more and more... (It can't just disappear)????

    Asked by lozzapotter2011 to Amelia, Jim, Liz, Prateek, Richard on 21 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Amelia Markey

      Amelia Markey answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      You can compress water but it takes a great deal of pressure to do so. Sometimes water is referred to as incompressible.

      Water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen atoms that are spaced quite far apart (further apart than they are in ice but not as far apart as they are in gaseous water). When you compress water you move the atoms closer to each other. However it’s difficult to do because the atoms repel each other. The water at the bottom of the sea is more dense (atoms are closer together) than the water at the surface because it has the weight of all the water pressing down on it and compressing it. The more you compress water the denser it becomes and the more viscous it becomes (less likely to flow).

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