Why is water polar? Why does water have a bent shape?

Why is water polar? The water molecule is made of an oxygen atom covalently bonded to two hydrogen atoms. A covalent bond is when a pair of electrons are shared between two atoms. However, in the water molecule, the bonds are polar. That is because the oxygen atom pulls the electrons closer to itself because oxygen is more electronegative than hydrogen. This causes one end of the bond slightly negative and the other end (the hydrogen atom end) slightly positive. Oxygen has 6 outer electrons (called valence electrons) for bonding. Only two are needed for bonding with two hydrogen atoms. The left over electrons pairs (known as lone pairs) repel each other so the molecule adopts a shape that minimizes this repulsion. This shape is called the bent shape of the water molecule. Because of this, the charges in the bonds do not cancel out and this causes the water molecule to be polar. A polar molecule is one that has slight charges at its ends.

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