Science question

Question

If ice, liquid water, and water vapor are all made up of H20 molecules; explain what makes them behave so differently.

Answer 1

The water molecules have attractive forces between them when they are close, and then hard repulsive forces when they are very close. The difference in phase is due to the temperature. When the molecules have a lot of energy, they are "bouncing" around, maybe vibrating if there is a lot of energy, and the states that they settle into at equilibrium are different depending on how much "bouncing" is happening. 

For example, for the molecules to form into a crystal solid, there cannot be too much "bouncing"; it would disrupt the structure of the solid, and keep the molecules from forming distinct equilibrium positions. 

 

The gas phase is a less organized phase where the "bouncing" keeps any large-scale organization from taking place. 

 

In short, the solid phase is an organized crystal lattice, the liquid and gas phases do not have an organized structure, but have other differences. The gas is the less organized phase. The simplest way to think about the differences between these phases is temperature, in a sense, the average energy of each molecule.