Question: what do you get when mixing solute and a solvent

Katherine Manfred answered on 6 Nov 2020:

A solution, of course! 🙂

Technically, a material doesn’t become a solute until it is dissolved into a solvent. A typical example is a sugar cube in water. The sugar becomes a solute when we plunk it into a glass of water and it disappears (to our eyes). The sugar molecules, initially in a nice, solid lump, spread out throughout the water. The sugar molecules are still sugar molecules, but now each one is surrounded by lots of water molecules.

Another example would be table salt in water. Even though it looks like the same thing is happening, in this case the individual ions (Na+ and Cl-) become separated when they spread out throughout the water.

Of course, not everything dissolves when you put it in a solvent. If you drop a coin into a glass of water, we would not say that the metal is a solute because it stays in one piece and doesn’t spread out or mix with the water molecules.

I hope that helps answer your question 🙂