What properties of water make it useful as a solvent? What types of compound can it (i) dissolve and (ii) hydrolyse?

Explanation

(i) Water is a useful, rather excellent solvent due to the following properties:
(ii) It is a liquid over a wide range of temperature `(0^(@)"to"100^(@)C)`
(iii) It is polar in nature and high dielectric constant (78.39).
It can dissolve polar substances and also some organic compounds due to hydrogen bonding. Water can hydrolyse oxides, haldies, phosphides, nitrides etc.