A Different Kind of Salt Water
Chemistry
Level
1
A chemist creates two aqueous solutions, one with table salt (sodium chloride) and the other with silver nitrate. If the two solutions are mixed with each other, will a precipitate form?
Yes, three or more precipitates will form
Yes, exactly one precipitate will form
Yes, exactly two precipitates will form
No
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
1 solution
The chemical equation for the reaction is
NaCl ( a q ) + AgNO 3 ( a q ) → AgCl ( s ) + NaNO 3 ( a q ) .
Since silver chloride is insoluble in water, it will form a precipitate. Since sodium nitrate is soluble in water, it will not form a precipitate. Therefore, we conclude that yes, exactly one precipitate will form.