Correcting Pauling’s Blunder: Hydrogen Bonding as a Dynamic Switch Governing Water’s Anomalies James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes Contact: solvingtornadoes@gmail.com

Traditional explanations Traditional explanations for water’s unusual behavior have focused on the difference in electronegativity between oxygen and hydrogen. In contrast, our proposed framework asserts that molecular polarity is chiefly determined by the interactions among the intrinsic electrical fields of individual atoms. While electronegativity does play a role, it is really the mutual and vectorial interactions of these fields—reshaping the electron density—that give rise to a molecule’s polarity. This refined understanding enables researchers to view hydrogen bonding as a dynamic “proximity switch.” When water molecules form hydrogen bonds, their opposing electrical fields partially cancel each other out, which reduces the overall polarity; when these bonds break, full polarity is restored. This mechanism offers a cohesive explanation for more than 70 persistent anomalies in water’s behavior.

Rethinking Molecular Polarity The classical view—championed by Linus Pauling in the 1950s—attributes the polarity of water to the inherent electronegativity differences between oxygen and hydrogen. However, this perspective fails to account for numerous anomalies observed in water’s physical properties. We contend that the primary determinant of a molecule’s polarity is not simply electronegativity differences but rather the interplay of the electrical fields produced by these individual atoms. As a consequence of being brought into close proximity to each other, when two hydrogen atoms bond covalently to oxygen, their electric fields induce a redistribution of electron density on the oxygen, and reciprocally, oxygen’s electric field does the same on the hydrogen atoms. This asymmetric interaction results in a polar molecule; however, the conventional attribution to electronegativity differences alone overlooks the dynamic contribution of these electric field interactions.

Hydrogen Bonding as a “Proximity Switch” Our model introduces hydrogen bonding as a mechanism that modulates polarity. When two water molecules form a hydrogen bond, segments of their respective electrical fields oppose each other, resulting in partial cancellation of the net polar force. This “proximity switch” mechanism is reversible—once the hydrogen bond dissociates, full polarity is reinstated. This dynamic modulation of polarity explains water’s perplexing characteristics, characteristics that heretofore have been dismissed as, “anomalous.”