Table salt has a solubility of 36 g of salt in 100 g of water at 40°C. If 15 g of the salt are added to 50 g of water at the same temperature, is the resulting solution saturated or unsaturated? Explain your answer

unsaterated

Saturated, because you added the salt.

To determine if the resulting solution is saturated or unsaturated, we need to compare the amount of salt added to the maximum amount of salt that can dissolve in the given amount of water at the given temperature.

The solubility of table salt in water at 40°C is stated as 36 g of salt in 100 g of water. This means that at 40°C, 100 g of water can dissolve a maximum of 36 g of salt.

In this scenario, we have 50 g of water and we added 15 g of salt to it. So, we need to check if 50 g of water can dissolve a sufficient amount of salt.

To find out, we can set up a proportion using the known solubility:

36 g of salt / 100 g of water = x g of salt / 50 g of water

Cross-multiplying, we can solve for x:

(36 g of salt) * (50 g of water) = (100 g of water) * x

1800 g of salt = 100 g of water * x

x = (1800 g of salt) / (100 g of water)

x = 18 g of salt

The result of our calculation is 18 g of salt. Since we added only 15 g of salt to the solution, and the maximum amount that can be dissolved is 18 g of salt, we can conclude that the solution is unsaturated.

Therefore, the resulting solution is unsaturated because it contains less salt than the maximum amount that can dissolve in the given amount of water at 40°C.