Concept
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Spherical Distribution of Charge
Charge distribution in a water molecule
Schematic representation of the outer electron cloud of a neutral water molecule. The electrons spend more time near the oxygen than the hydrogens, giving a permanent charge separation as shown. Water is thus a polar molecule. It is more easily affected by electrostatic forces than molecules with uniform charge distributions.
Source
Boundless vets and curates high-quality, openly licensed content from around the Internet. This particular resource used the following sources:
"OpenStax College, Coulomb’s Law. October 25, 2012."
http://cnx.org/content/m42308/latest/
OpenStax CNX
CC BY 3.0.