Substances which are easily soluble in water bear a certain resemblance to it. Thus sugar and salt in many of their superficial features remind one of ice.
Metals, which are not soluble in water, have no points in common with it, whilst on the other hand they dissolve each other in a molten state, forming alloys, just as oily substances dissolve each other; for example, tallow is soluble in petroleum and in olive oil, although they are all insoluble in water.
From this it is evident that the analogy of substances forming a solution plays an important part, and as aqueous and all other solutions are liquids, there is good reason to believe that in the process of solution solid and gaseous substances change in a physical sense, passing into a liquid state.
These considerations elucidate many points of solution—as, for instance, the variation of the co-efficient of solubility with the temperature and the evolution or absorption of heat in the formation of solutions.
The solubility—that is, the quantity of a substance necessary for saturation—varies with the temperature, and, further, with an increase in temperature the solubility of solid substances generally increases, and that of gases decreases; this might be expected, as solid substances by heating, and gases by cooling, approach to a liquid or dissolved state.24
A graphic method is often employed to express the variation of solubility with temperature.
On the axis of abscissæ or on a horizontal line, temperatures are marked out and perpendiculars are raised corresponding with each temperature, whose length is determined by the solubility of the salt at that temperature—expressing, for instance, one part by weight of a salt in 100 parts of water by one unit of length, such as a millimetre.
By joining the summits of the perpendiculars, a curve is obtained which expresses the degree of solubility at different temperatures. For solids, the curve is generally an ascending one—i.e. recedes from the horizontal line with the rise in temperature.
These curves clearly show by their inclination the degree of rapidity of increase in solubility with the temperature. Having determined several points of a curve—that is, having made a determination of the solubility for several temperatures—the solubility at intermediary temperatures may be determined from the form of the curve so obtained; in this way the empirical law of solubility may be examined.25
The results of research have shown that the solubility of certain salts—as, for example, common table salt—varies comparatively little with the temperature; whilst for other substances the solubility increases by equal amounts for equal increments of temperature. Thus, for example, for the saturation of 100 parts of water by potassium chloride there is required at 0°, 29·2 parts, at 20°, 34·7, at 40°, 40·2, at 60°, 45·7; and so on, for every 10° the solubility increases by 2·75 parts by weight of the salt. Therefore the solubility of the potassium chloride in water may be expressed by a direct equation: a = 29·2 + 0·275 t , where a represents the solubility at t °. For other salts, more complicated equations are required. For example, for nitre: a = 13·3 + 0·574 t + 0·01717 t 2 + 0·0000036 t 3 , which shows that when t = 0° a = 13·3, when t = 10° a = 20·8, and when t = 100° a