Dissolving

What is a Dissolving?

Sometimes substances break apart when you put them into another substance. This
is called dissolving.

An example is salt water. Salt is a compound made of sodium and chlorine. When
you put salt on your food, it is a solid made of molecules that have one sodium
atom and one chlorine atom. When added to water, the salt breaks apart into its
separate atoms.

What is a solution?

The substance that dissolves is called the solute. The substance the solute dissolves
into is called the solvent. The solute and solvent together is called the solution.

In the above example, the salt is the solute, the water is the solvent, and the slat
water is the solution.

The image below shows you that even though the solute might look like it
diappears, it really doesn’t.

What Kind of Change?

It’s a little complicated, but it is best to call dissolving a physical change. After all,
nothing new has been made. The solute has just broken up and is mixed in with the
solvent.