Question

(4 pts) Describe what you would expect to observe at the macroscopic level when sodium chloride (‘salt’; NaCl) is placed into water and stirred. Explain what you think is occurring at the molecular‐level with the particles that accounts for the macroscopic observations you describe. You should use precise terminology in this explanation to distinguish whether you think the particles are molecules, atoms, and/or ions.

Answer 1

When table salt is dissolved in water it gets fully dissolved in water . Water is polar and has high di-electric constant thus dissolves many substances into it. When NaCl is dissolved , it breaks into Na+ ion and Cl- ion. The sodium ions gets hydrated by water molecules as well as chloride ions. When you add salt into water, due to the Vander Waal’s force between Hydrogen and Oxygen, it gets split up into 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen ions. The energy produced while the splitting of H2O, the NaCl gets split by absorbing that energy. Out of these, One H+ ion gets attracted to the Cl- ion and the remaining H+, O-2 and the Na+ ions combine to form NaOH.

Macroscopically, the table salt gets dissolved in water until water is fully saturated with table salt.. We do not see any precipitate at the bottom of the beaker

When the water gets fully saturated and further addition of table salt will result in settling of table salt at the bottom.