Factors Affecting the Solubility

Take some sand and try to dissolve it in a cup of water. What happens? The
sand will not dissolve; in other words, it is insoluble. Insoluble means that the
substance does not dissolve. If you were to take a teaspoon of table salt or sugar and
conduct the same experiment, the result would be different. Salt and sugar are both
soluble in water. When a substance is soluble, it means that the substance has the
ability to dissolve in another substance.

Solubility is the maximum amount of a substance that will dissolve in a given amount of
solvent at a specific temperature. There are two direct factors that affect solubility:
temperature and pressure. Temperature affects the solubility of both solids and gases,
but pressure only affects the solubility of gases. Surface area does not affect how much
of a solute will be dissolved, but it is a factor in how quickly or slowly the substance will
dissolve. In this section, we will explore all three of these factors and how they affect the
solubility of solids and gases.

The Effect of Temperature on Solubility

Temperature has a direct effect on solubility. For the majority of ionic solids,
increasing the temperature increases how quickly the solution can be made. As the
temperature increases, the particles of the solid move faster, which increases the
chances that they will interact with more of the solvent particles. This results in
increasing the rate at which a solution occurs.

Temperature can also increase the amount of solute that can be dissolved in a
solvent. Generally speaking, as the temperature is increased, more solute particles will
be dissolved. For instance, when you add table sugar to water, a solution is quite easily
made. When you heat that solution and keep adding sugar, you find that large amounts
of sugar can be added as the temperature keeps rising. The reason this occurs is
because as the temperature increases, the intermolecular forces can be more easily
broken, allowing more of the solute particles to be attracted to the solvent particles.
There are other examples, though, where increasing the temperature has very little
effect on how much solute can be dissolved. Table salt is a good example: you can
dissolve just about the same amount of table salt in ice water as you can in boiling
water.

For all gases, as the temperature increases, the solubility decreases. The kinetic
molecular theory can be used to explain this phenomenon. As the temperature
increases, the gas molecules move faster and are then able to escape from the liquid.
The solubility of the gas, then, decreases.

Looking at the graph below, ammonia gas, NH3, shows a sharp decline in

solubility as the temperature increases, whereas all of the ionic solids show an increase
in solubility as the temperature increases.