What makes water wet(liquid)? I know it’s got oxy and hydrogen, but why is it ‘wet’?
Water being a liquid and water being wet are two different things. Not all liquids are wet. Which is it you want to know?
“Wet” is just our word for what (liquid) water is like. It is wet by definition
Of course,** astro** is right that “wetting” has a technical meaning in physics, to do with how liquids interact with surfaces. However, that is narrower than the colloquial meaning of “wet,” and might or might not be what you actually want to understand.
If you want to know about some particular aspect of what water is like, well then, there is probably a scientific explanation, and you may find your answer at astro’s link, but just asking why water is wet is like asking why food is edible: because if it ain’t edible it ain’t food.
Ditto njjt. In fact the origin of the word “wet” is the old words for “water”.
Water clings to things because the water molecule has some tendency to be attracted at very small distances, due to it having an imbalance of charge over its terrain, and there being imbalances in other surfaces that more or less match up with that of water.
Water clings much better to some things (water loving or hydrophillic) than to others (water fearing or hydrophobic) because the mutual affinities between water and some things (glass, metal) are stronger than between water and other things (wax, diamond). Water is pretty polar, meaning it has an asymmetric charge distribution, and other things that do that, like acetone and alcohol, mix with water. Nonpolar liquids like hexane or benzene won’t mix with it.
Water feels cool to the touch because it evaporates, which absorbs local heat, and because it has a high volumetric heat capacity (around 4e6 J/(m^3 K)).
Water is important in our weather because Earth has lots of water and Earth’s temperature hovers around the freezing point of water. Astronomers refer to a “snow zone” (IIRC) that facilitates water based weather in a band at a certain distance from stars with planets.
Are any of these what you are getting at?