Solubility Demonstration

Use demonstrations when teaching about solubility. Students need to be thinking about what's going on. You have two clear solutions and when you mix them together a white precipitate forms instantly. Then decant the liquid and get them to think about what’s in the supernatant and what is the solid. Go on to use calculations to work out the solubility for an amount of substance. Use the amount that you can see as a precipitate to work out how much is in a saturated solution. You can get students to think about being the ions as a kind of role play, because they often think that once you've got a saturated solution it's static and that what’s solid will stay solid and what's ions will stay ions, and if you have excess solid it just drops to the bottom and doesn't dissolve at all.