I could be totally wrong here but I was thinking about water surface and what creates that. My thought is it is the thin mixture of water and air separating the two. This mixture creates the boundary between water and air that has the property of surface tension.
So does the surface of water in a vacuum act in the same way? Is there a surface with surface tension when there is no air to make the mixture?
Answer
Yes, water still has surface tension in a vacuum.
Water/vacuum surface tension is 72.8 dyn/cm experimentally according to Zhang et al. J. Chem. Phys. 103, 10252 (1995).
Surface tension is caused by the fact that water molecules in the bulk (not at the surface), are surrounded by other water molecules with which they interact through intermolecular forces. At the surface, the molecules cannot be completely surrounded by other water molecules. The surface molecules are in a higher energy state because they are not stablized by intermolecular interactions. This is why liquids tend to miniumize surface area and become spherical droplets absence any other forces.
Also, the attractive force from other water molecules on the surface molecules has a net force in the direction toward the interior.
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