How would the molecular (microscopic) level of salt and sugar look when dissolved in water?

1 Answer
Mar 21, 2017

Well, #NaCl(aq)# involves bond breaking, and #C_6H_12O_6(aq)# involves solvation.......

Explanation:

When an ionic salt dissolves in water (or some other polar solvent), bond breaking is conceived to occur. For salt, in water, the strong electrostatic bond between #Na^+# and #Cl^-# ions are broken, and ion-dipole complexes with the water molecules result. As far as anyone knows, we could represent these as #[Na(OH_2)_6]^+# and #[Cl(H_2O)_(4-6)]^-#.

www.imgarcade.com

On the other hand, when sugar dissolves in water, NO chemical bonds are broken, and the polar hydroxyl groups of the sugar molecule are solvated by water molecules.

http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/resources/highschool/chemmatters/past-issues/archive-2014-2015/candymaking.html

Please note that the pictures are CONCEPTIONS; they are not a physical structural representation, such as an X-ray structure would provide.