Which condition did you change?
Labs / Chemistry
Solubility Curve
Pick a salt, then drag the marker on the graph — move it right to heat the water and up to add more solute. The beaker fills with dissolved particles, and any solute that will not fit settles to the bottom as a solid. The readout tells you whether the solution is unsaturated, saturated, or supersaturated.
Labs / Chemistry / Solubility Curve
Solubility Curve
Pick a salt, then drag the marker on the graph — move it right to heat the water and up to add more solute. The beaker fills with dissolved particles, and any solute that will not fit settles to the bottom as a solid. The readout tells you whether the solution is unsaturated, saturated, or supersaturated.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Chemistry connects events too small to see with changes we can measure. This model helps you link particles, energy, and conditions to an observable result.
Explore
Try the model
State —Dissolved 0 gLimit 0 gExcess 0 g
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- Why does potassium nitrate (KNO₃) dissolve so much more as it heats up, while table salt (NaCl) barely changes?
- Add enough solute to sit right on the curve. What is happening at the bottom of the beaker when the solution is exactly saturated?
- Dissolve everything at a high temperature, then slowly cool the water. How can the solution hold more than its limit — and what does “Seed crystal” do?
- For a supersaturated solution, does clicking Seed crystal change how much ends up dissolved, or only how fast the crystals appear?
- Which salt would you choose to grow the biggest crystals by cooling, and why does the steepness of its curve matter?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Describe what happened at the particle or energy level, then connect it to the result you saw. A strong explanation names both the cause and the evidence.
Check
Before you leave
What happened to the particles or energy?
What observation supports your explanation?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.