[achekali]

My question is this, Water is a polar; CCl₄ is a nonpolar solvent. In which solvent is each of the following more likely to be soluble?
A)KCl,ionic
B)I₂, non polar
C)sucrose (table sugar), polar
D)gasoline, non polar

I was told that the way you tell if something is a solvent, is it weights more and its the liquid.
so for example
A)10.0g of NaCl and 100.0g H₂O
The H₂O is the solvent and the NaCl is the solute.
Is that correct? How does this relate to the problem I asked above?

[stewie griffin]

A solvent is something that dissolves something else. The solute is whatever is being dissolved. Based off of that, yes the solvent is almost always liquid (I actually can't think of a time when I've seen a solvent that wasn't a liquid). However the solute doesn't have to be a solid.... it could be an oil or even a gas. In fact, look at part D of your question. Gasoline sure isn't a solid.
In your own example, yes water is the solvent (it is doing the dissolving) and NaCl is the solute (it is being dissolved in the water). Now you ask how that relates to the problems above....
Well a general rule is "like dissolves like". So polar solutes will dissolve very well in polar solvents. Likewise, nonpolar solutes will dissolve very well in nonpolar solvents. However, try to dissolve a nonpolar solute in a polar solvent (or a polar solute in a nonpolar solvent) and you'll find that they don't dissolve/mix well at all. Think about oil and water. Oil is nonpolar, water is polar... so they don't mix with each other. From this you should be able to answer your questions.

[achekali]

Thanks that did help a lot.  And I was able to answer all of the questions correctly.