Sodium Chloride?

Question

I'm doing observations for an experiment and would like to know what you would see if you made sodium chloride a saturated solution and then heated it up and made it saturated again. Would it just be crystals?

Answer 1

If the solution is saturated in sodium chloride - then that means no more will go into solution. If you raise the heat - you may make MORE sodium chloide dissolve to form an even MORE saturated solution, but as is cooled the excess sodium chloride would precipitate out.

While it is precipitating out ts would act as seed crystals for the saturated solution causing the already saturated sodium chloride to precipitate out.

So in the end - you'd still end up with a saturated sodium chloride solution, but it would be less saturated than if you hadn't heated and then cooled it.

Of course, with the new crystals in the bottom of your cooled flash you could vigorously shake the solution for about 10 minutes (stoppered of course), and then the solution would again be the same saturated solution as you started with in the first place!

Answer 2

If you made a saturated solution of NaCl at an elevated temperature and cooled it down, you would form some crystals as it cooled. actually not too many since the solubility of NaCl doesn't increase a lot with temperature.