the hydrogen bond helps water give it certain abilities these properties are listed here water is a universal solvent a solvent is something that dissolves something else and water dissolves a lot of things when i was a kid my mom would always spit on a tissue and wipe my mouth off before school spit is mostly water and dissolves a lot of stuff water is cohesive and adhesive it sticks to itself and it sticks to other things do you know people that have long hair my sister did and it took forever for her hair to dry unless she used a hair dryer every hair was covered in water the molecules of water bond tightly at the top of the water and create something called surface tension surface tension is the reason why bubbles are round surface tension lots of insects wouldn't have a place to live because they would drown water has a high heat capacity water holds a lot of heat and still remains stable if you've ever gone swimming in the afternoon the water is usually warm it absorbs a lot of heat and it holds on to that heat however if the temperature gets too hot it vaporizes this means it has a high heat of vaporization when you get hot what happens your body produces sweat in response when the sweat evaporates it removes the heat and you cool down no sweat no cooling dogs don't sweat so what do they do to cool off they pant birds don't sweat so they pant too have you ever watched a bird pant it's rather funny to watch finally frozen water is less dense than liquid water which means it floats water also freezes from the surface of the water down into the water this allows us to go ice skating and ice fishing fish won't freeze so don't worry you should know the properties of water and be able to generally explain each one of them