why does salt melt snow on roads?
In: Chemistry
Water molecules like to stick to each other, but they can also stick to other things. Heat makes them stick to each other less, but other things can do that too.
When there’s a medium amount of stickage to other water molecules, water is it’s a liquid. When there’s a lot of stickage to other water molecules, water is a solid (ice.) When it gets cold, that makes more stickage to other water molecules happen, so water freezes into ice.
Water *really* likes to stick to salt tho. So when you throw some salt on ice, it decreases the stickage to other water molecules because it wants to stick to the salt instead. Since there’s less stickage to other water molecules, it melts into water even though its colder than the temp it would normally freeze at if there was no salt to stick to.
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