In: Chemistry
how does atomic radius, ionization energt, or electron affinity explains the solubility of ions?
Best Answer: Individual ions are not soluble or insoluble.
Compounds are soluble or insoluble. A compound which is soluble can
dissociate into ions.
Since an ion is a particle that is already in solution, then it is
pointless to discuss its "solubility".
========== Follow up ===========
See. Asher is making my point while thinking he is answering your
question. He talks about the solubility of barium sulfate, which is
a compound. Ditto for the sodium chloride.
The solubility of a compound is the result of a "competition"
between the attractive forces between the two potential ions in the
compound and the attractive forces between each of the two
potential ions and water molecules.
If the water molecules have a greater attractive force for the
parts of the compound than the parts of the compound have for each
other, then the compound (notice the word "compound") will be
soluble in water.
H2O<---Na-Cl--->HOH
The pulls that water exerts on Na and Cl are greater than the
attractive force between Na and Cl, and the compound dissociates
into ions.
H2O<---Ag-Cl--->HOH
The pulls that water exerts on Ag and Cl are not greater than the
attractive force between Ag and Cl, and the compound is
insoluble.
There is more to it than simply the sizes and charges of the ions
once the internal bonds are broken. It really has more to do with
the strengths of the internal bonds.
pisgahchemist · 7 years ago
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It is well known phenomena that greater the charge of an ion the more water molecules it can attract around it self. Small ionic size also help in the solubility of an ion. For e.g, barium sulfate even though being an ionic compound is insoluble because of the difficulty of solubilizing sulfate ions by the water molecules. But, sodium chloride (common salt) is readily soluble in water because of the comparative sizes of both the cation and the anion that the water molecules solvate it easily. As the ionic size increases solubility decreases. Lithium is less readily solubilized than Beryllium because the former has a greater atomic size than the latter