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Topic: Is ksp only for salts?  (Read 362 times)

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Offline gavindor

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Is ksp only for salts?
« on: January 12, 2024, 08:58:25 AM »
Is ksp(or a reported ksp), only for salts?

Or can it be for a substance that , like sugar, dissolves but only into its molecules not into ions?

Thanks

Offline Vidya

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Re: Is ksp only for salts?
« Reply #1 on: January 12, 2024, 09:46:18 AM »
I think you are right Ksp can be used for any substance means ionic or covalent.

Offline Corribus

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Re: Is ksp only for salts?
« Reply #2 on: January 12, 2024, 11:08:20 AM »
In principle there's no reason why you can't express the dissolution of non-ionic substances (like glucose, say) in terms of a solubility product equilibrium constant, since these substances are subject to the same laws of equilibrium as anything else. In practice this kind of formalism is rarely used, and solubility is most typically expressed in simpler terms of mass/volume. If you think a little bit about how Ksp is typically used for ionic substances, and how that would translate into a non-ionic substances that does not dissociate into multiple species when they dissolve, you can probably come up with the reason this is the case.
What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?  - Richard P. Feynman

Offline gavindor

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Re: Is ksp only for salts?
« Reply #3 on: January 12, 2024, 11:10:29 AM »
I think you are right Ksp can be used for any substance means ionic or covalent.

thanks.. looking here https://gchem.cm.utexas.edu/data/section2.php?target=ksp-constants.php  they all seem to be salts?

do you have any covalent examples? / list with any covalent examples

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