I don't think you understand what a molecule is.
I have a good understanding of what a molecule is.
It is not a bunch of atoms that are close to each other.
Molecules are compounds made up of atoms with chemical bonds between the atoms.
Not only.
A molecule has no necessary fixed bonds between the atoms (this is more evident with big molecules).
The "bonds" are some sort of quantic electron appariement and those bonds can exchange with other bonds within the same molecule.
Therefore we dont have only 1 representation of one molecule.
The different configurations of the same molecule are more or less stable, so we could have 10% in the configuration 1, 30% in the configuration 2, 60% in the configuration 3, etc.
With complex molecules, we can have many many configuratioin states.
The stability (so the % of each) is determined by the environnment.
Water is some special environnment and the ionic composants in the water can have some influence on the % of each configuration.
Etc.
So, as said, the water molecule should be understand as some bigger molecule where the interversion of the bonds of water molecule
with... itself (because it is not only H20 but a bigger molecule).
To be more clear, the interversion apply at quantic level.
Per example, if you have a big or small molecule (whatever... it is a molecule and it is why you can name it a molecule) , if you change the electronic bound at some location of the molecule, this change apply INSTANTLY at an other position of the molecule.
The molecule (or his quantum wave) behave as if it would be the same quantic object.
They might be in solid form, liquid form or gaseous form.
Not only.
There are plenty of physical states for the matter (yes, molcules are matter).
Sometime it remains not any comoon molecule at all, like in the plasma state.
Some are small (oxygen molecules) and some are large (proteins.)
And some very large. ARN and ADN.
And just because a bunch of molecules are (for example) in the solid state, it does not mean they all become one molecule - even though they share weaker hydrogen bonds (in the case of water) or ionic bonds (in the case of iron.) These bonds do not make them molecules, although they greatly affect the properties of the material (conductivity, reactivity, melting point etc.)
Yes, but just because they are in liquid state, it does not mean they can not be considered as molecules (1 molecule for the entire sea is the extrem case and you and i can understand that my teacher was saying this to open our mind (there are not such big molecule of sure, for some reason we will ot discuss here))
PNAS said:
It has been suggested, based on x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) experiments on liquid water [Wernet, Ph., et al. (2004) Science 304, 995–999], that a condensed-phase water molecule’s asymmetric electron density results in only two hydrogen bonds per water molecule on average.
The larger implication of the XAS interpretation is that the conventional view of liquid water being a tetrahedrally coordinated random network is now replaced by a structural organization that instead strongly favors hydrogen-bonded water chains or large rings embedded in a weakly hydrogen-bonded disordered network.
This work reports that the asymmetry of the hydrogen density exhibited in the XAS experiments agrees with reported x-ray scattering structure factors and intensities for Q > 6.5 Å−1. However, the assumption that the asymmetry in the hydrogen electron density does not fluctuate and is persistent in all local molecular liquid water environments is inconsistent with longer-ranged tetrahedral network signatures present in experimental x-ray scattering intensity and structure factor data for Q < 6.5 Å−1.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0510593103
So if you understand this kind of news, you can understand that a water molecule wich is "connected" with other water molecules, formins some string, can be understand as some big molecule, BECAUSE they are linked, like the other molecules, at a QM level.
What have all this to do with the question of this thread ?
Water here is not like water here, water ponds can be different. There is no random positioning H3O+ and OH- but a structuration of the water and Quantum Mecanic is at work.
So water remain the more complex liquid we have on earth.
