Cohesion

I was attending my biology homework when I came across a question regarding the transportation of water in xylem vessels.


“Explain what is meant by cohesion”

I look up in my Latin dictionary once. The word ‘cohesion’ comes from the Latin word ‘cohaerentia’ (ae).

In chemistry, cohesion (or cohesive forces) is a sort of a physical property of a certain substance, due to the intermolecular attraction between the same molecules (or like molecules) within a substance that that acts to unite them. The attraction of water to the sides of your measuring cylinder is an example of cohesion. Water is like strongly cohesive towards each other, forming four hydrogen bonds with other water molecules in a tetrahedral configuration. So, there are strong Coulumb forces between the molecules!

But what rings in my head is the word cohesion. There’s cohesion of what so many other bullshit out there!

When I was 10, my dad got me a book about landslides. In geology, cohesion is the shear strength of a rock or soil. That’s all I’ve ever knew, until my dear Cikgu Azmi told me that cohesion in soils is caused by root cohesion (ya, we blaja in geo form 4 kan!). So, if you continue logging, burning trees down and such, the soil loses its cohesion, because no friggin plant is going to suck up water and keep a certain perfect volume of solution in the soil. Another is the electrostatic forces in firm, over-consolidated soil. In geology, consolidation of soil happens when soil decrease in volume, you know when soil is packed more tightly; the bulk of its volume is reduced. Another way is just the cementing of the entire crap by calcium carbonate or natrium chloride (this soalan will never keluar).

In the context of language, or more specific, linguistics, cohesion is the relationship between grammar and lexicons in a sentence. It binds and holds the text together, giving it meaning and expression. Like using exophorics to describe something without knowing what they really are (When English class get a little too boring...)

According to my ‘beloved’ Politics for Dummies, cohesion can also be used in the world of political science, mainly to refer to the bonds that brings people and communities together, something known as ‘social cohesion’

This post reminds me of the conversation I had with my dad two years ago. The word ‘Dress’. You can refer it to clothing, to put clothes on, to dress a horse, a barber dressing his customer, to dress the surface of a material, a costume, DRESS syndrome, to dress a salad, etc...

Are Speedos ‘cohesive dressings’?