A substance that carries an electric current when dissolved in wa...

Question

A substance that carries an electric current when dissolved in water is called a(n)

Accepted Answer

Hey everyone in this example, we need to give the best explanation for what causes electrolyte solutions to conduct electricity. Our first step is to recall what an electrolyte really is. And we want to recall that specifically electrolytes that are strong are going to be all soluble ionic compounds. Now let's think of an example here. If we imagine hydrochloric acid and it being dissolved in water, we want to recall that our hydrochloric acid before it's dissolved as assault and we categorize it as assault due to the fact that it has ionic character, even though it's actually a covalin or molecular compound. And again, we recall that ionic compounds are compounds where we have a metal and a nonmetal transferring electrons between one another to form the compound. However, again, high uh hcl is a molecular compound. And so we have therefore to nonmetal atoms bonded to one another are hydrogen and chlorine Sharing electrons with one another. But again, we're labeling hydrochloric acid as a salt because it does have ionic character despite being a molecular compound. And that comes from the fact that based on our electro negativity trend, which we recall increases from the bottom towards the top right of our periodic tables. Chlorine is going to be more electro negative than our hydrogen. And so we would distinguish that by placing a partially negative charge on our chlorine and a partially positive charge on our hydrogen. And so that's referring to the fact that between the bond of our hydrogen and chlorine, Those electrons are going to be pulled more towards the more electro negative atom being our chlorine atom and that is what is creating our ionic character of our hydrochloric acid. And so because it does have ionic character, it's a salt, it's going to dissociate in water. And on top of that we also can recognize that this is a chloride. So when we think of our cell ability rules, we want to recall that for chloride salts outside of lead, mercury and silver, the soluble chloride salts are going to associate fully when dissolved in water. And so we would form the following ions. H plus Arkady on and cl minus are an eye on here. And this is actually what is forming our electrolyte solution because we have this we have associated um our salt has associated into its ionic parts here. And so imagining this electrolyte solution, we have these ions flowing around in the solution, oops that should be a minus their cl minus. We have these positive Catalans and we have these negative and ions flowing around in the solution and at some chance they're going to of course interact with one another and it's the interaction of our ions and their separation of charge that is going to create electricity. And so we can conclude that twice a is going to be the best answer choice to complete this example. We conduct electricity and electrolyte solutions because we have a movement of ions through our through the solution we have the flow of the Catalans and the ann ions interacting with one another with their separation of charge, creating electricity. And so this will complete this example as our final answer. So I hope that everything we reviewed was clear. If you have any questions, leave them down below and I'll see everyone in the next practice video.

A substance that carries an electric current when dissolved in water is called a(n)

Watch next