When Salt breaks from Sodium chloride in water to sodium ions and chloride ions, shouldn’t it no longer be chemically salt? If so why is water salty?

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When Salt breaks from Sodium chloride in water to sodium ions and chloride ions, shouldn’t it no longer be chemically salt? If so why is water salty?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Water doesn’t break the bonds between sodium and chloride. The sodium chloride is suspended in the water, until the concentration is too high and then it will fall to the bottom. It is a salt water solution.

Anonymous 0 Comments

>If so why is water salty?

When we taste salt, we’re not actually tasting the entire compound, sodium chloride. What we’re tasting and responding to are the sodium *ions*, Na^+ , that result when salt dissolves into solution.

Anonymous 0 Comments

If you’re referring to the taste, it’s because the process of us tasting salty water isn’t that different from us tasting salt.

Our taste buds have little receptors that detect molecules of different shapes. There are receptors for sodium and chloride ions. When we eat salt, it dissolves in our saliva, and we taste the ions. When we drink salt water, we still just taste the ions. There aren’t receptors for dry un-dissolved salt crystals, to my knowledge.

Anonymous 0 Comments

> If so why is water salty?

We taste Na+, *not salt*.

> shouldn’t it no longer be chemically salt?

It’s not, it’s aqueous sodium ions and chloride ions, i.e. an electrolyte. If you mix two salts, e.g. salt and KBr in water and dry it, you get a mess of all four possible ccombination when it crystalizes.