I am not Bob, not even close to that awesome. But hydrophobic means water fearing, water will not mix with another substance/surface. The opposite would be hydrophilic, or water loving. The water would mix well with another substance/surface. Wax is hydrophobic, water beads and does not mix well because it is "fearing water." Hopefully Bob can add a nice comment to better the answer to your question.
^^^
IMO: this is an excellent description of hydrophobic!
(And my thanks to both you and...
Bob FUNX650...can you please chime in? Bob is our AGO dictionary....a cool one at that!!
rops:
...for your kind words)
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I always like to include a picture whenever describing,
or defining Hydrophobic/Hydrophobicity. Like this one:
•This pictures shows that to be hydrophobic...
the water bead (depicted here as being blue):
-has a high contact angle (usually more than 90 degrees.)
-has in and of itself....a low amount of surface area...of which it can utilize to adhere/attach itself to another surface...(Surface Tension)
-therefore: it has little ability to "wet" the surface it's sitting on.
Also:
•Hydrophobicity can also be described as a:
polar vs. non-polar phenomenon.
-Water is a polar molecule---carries an electrical charge (negative) between its oxygen atoms.
-Therefore, any materials with a charge, be it negative or positive, will be able to interact (have an affinity) with water molecules...in other words: hydrophilic, the opposite of hydrophobic.
•So essentially:
-Hydrophobic molecules are molecules that do not have an electrical charge...they are non-polar.
-And by lacking a charge, they can not have any charge-to-charge interactions with water.
-Thus they are termed as being "afraid of water": Hydrophobic!!
Bob
