💧 Aqueous Solution
An aqueous solution is a solution in which the solvent is water. It is one of the most common types of solutions in chemistry, where various solutes such as salts, acids, bases, or gases are dissolved in water to form a homogeneous mixture.
🔬 Characteristics
- Water acts as the universal solvent due to its polar nature.
- The solute can be an ionic compound (like NaCl) or a molecular substance (like sugar).
- Solutions can conduct electricity if the solute dissociates into ions (electrolytes).
- They appear as a single phase even if the solute was originally solid, liquid, or gas.
🧪 Behavior of Solutes in Water
When ionic compounds dissolve in water, they dissociate into ions. For example, sodium chloride (NaCl) separates into Na+ and Cl−. Molecular substances may remain intact or ionize depending on their nature (e.g., acids).
🌊 Example:
Sugar dissolved in water forms an aqueous solution. It becomes uniformly distributed throughout the water, but it does not dissociate into ions, so it does not conduct electricity.
🧠 Note:
Aqueous solutions play a critical role in biological processes, environmental chemistry, and industrial applications. Many reactions in the human body, for example, occur in aqueous environments like blood plasma.