Question

What can water dissolve?

Answer 1

• Water is known as the universal solvent as a different types of compounds are dissolved in it from simple salt to different gases.
• It can absorb and carry with it various nutrients, minerals, and chemicals from different places as it flows or remains stagnant.
• This extreme solubility of water is due to its chemical composition, which has electronegative oxygen bonded to two electropositive hydrogen atoms. This makes it a polar molecule, which has partial positive charges on it.
• This charge distribution allows the water molecule to interact with other molecules like salts, proteins that are hydrophilic, etc.
• The compounds that are to be dissolved in water should either possess an ionic charge on them or should be polar in nature.
• Thus, the compounds that can be dissolved in water are ionic compounds, hydrophilic proteins, and polar molecules.