Why does stirring your spoon in a cup dissolve salt or sugar?
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Sugar and table salt are highly soluble in water but there comes a limit where the water physically can’t accept any more of them (saturation point).
If you don’t stir the liquid, you will end up with some water that is saturated with them and other parts of the liquid not having any, but being unable to get to the solid at any great speed (water molecules can move around the bulk – diffusion – but this is a random process so it will take a long time for molecules to get from the top to the bottom of the container).
By agitating the container you are moving the liquid (and also the solid) around very quickly so they come into contact a lot more frequently, allowing more of the water molecules to get involved in dissolving the solute.
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