Why is a hydrate not the same as a regular chemical compound?

1 Answer
anor277
Apr 22, 2017

Well chemical compounds are typically touted to have CONSTANT CHEMICAL COMPOSITION........

Explanation:

But hydrates can be completely dried or incompletely dried.

Consider the hydrates of #"chromium(III) chloride"#. Now anhydrous #CrCl_3# is a beautiful purple solid. We can hydrate this salt to give GREEN crystals of #CrCl_3*3H_2O#, the trihydrate. Of course, this trihydrate is an actual chemical compound, but most of the time inorganic chemists want to remove the water, so that they can do the chemistry on the metal centre. Are you happy with this answer?

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