I am no scientist, as you will soon discover, but science fascinates me. Often, while doing dishes or some other mundane chore, my mind will wander. No telling where. Today it decided to focus on desalination. Don't ask me why, it just did. I'm a woman for goodness sakes. I do have a motive for posting about it - again, I'm a woman... I believe that nothing is hard if you think hard enough about it. As my limited knowledge allows me to go only so far into my mental meanderings, I figure you learned bloggers can help me unravel the scientific mysteries that perplex me. And if you can't, this thinking out-loud process is quite satisfying - even at the very likely risk of demonstrating my total ignorance.
Are salt and water that much in love with each other that we can't easily separate them? Surely, there must be a skanky little chemical that would entice the sodium and chloride ions to itself and away from the H2O molecules. I'm imagining a hot and heavy romance where Na+ and CL- will eagerly and with complete abandon rush to share electrons with this irresistible interloper. They would unashamedly go at it until every salt ion is inextricably bonded into a crystal solid
The crystal structure of sodium chloride. Each atom has four nearest neighbors, with octahedral geometry. The larger green ones are the chloride atoms.
- how NaCl likes it in the first place - only now arranged differently - shacked up into some comfy configuration with this skank's atoms.
The separation would then be complete and the final dissolution of the water/salt marriage only requiring the physical removal of the newly formed crystal solid. Far from being bitter over this entirely salacious affair, water reverts to its sweet self again.
There must be a good reason why this isn't as simple as I imagine it should be. Although, I believe that there are ingenious methods of manipulating the physical world around us and it's only a matter of discovering them.
The separation would then be complete and the final dissolution of the water/salt marriage only requiring the physical removal of the newly formed crystal solid. Far from being bitter over this entirely salacious affair, water reverts to its sweet self again.
There must be a good reason why this isn't as simple as I imagine it should be. Although, I believe that there are ingenious methods of manipulating the physical world around us and it's only a matter of discovering them.
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