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nobody_in_here t1_jd408q9 wrote

Don't mean to hijack the post, OP has a great question, but their question made me want to ask something similar: salt, like let's say sodium chloride, from what I understand it dissociates into it's consituent ions when in water. Like it becomes free Na and Cl just floating around in water right? Would that mean if you saw free Na and free Cl ions swimming around, and they're not bonding, you could assume it's a liquid or no?

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Chemomechanics t1_jd4ptcm wrote

> Like it becomes free Na and Cl just floating around in water right?

They aren't free, they're solvated—that is, they're stabilized through interactions with the surrounding solvent. This is why they don't immediately bond, so we can't remove this crucial aspect.

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