why does salt lower water’s freezing point but raise its boiling point?

178 views

I’m risking being wrong about being wrong on this one, because I’ve recently been informed that my lifelong, rock solid conception of salt’s effect on water is half backwards. 49 years believing the salt simply shifted the entire state if matter index of water downward, so that both the freezing and boiling points lowered. I guess because I could see the effect on ice in the wintertime, but never bothered to measure at which point my pasta water actually came to a boil. I looked up some explanations but I can’t get my head wrapped around it. What did I get wrong?

In: 2

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Salt increases the boiling point by making the water phase more stable. One way to think about it in terms of going from liquid to gas is the salt helps the water molecules want to stick to each other even more versus flying apart into being separate gas molecules.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Salt increases the boiling point by making the water phase more stable. One way to think about it in terms of going from liquid to gas is the salt helps the water molecules want to stick to each other even more versus flying apart into being separate gas molecules.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Salt increases the boiling point by making the water phase more stable. One way to think about it in terms of going from liquid to gas is the salt helps the water molecules want to stick to each other even more versus flying apart into being separate gas molecules.