Copper Sulphate Pentahydrate

Ionic compounds are crucial to many chemical, biological and industrial processes. These compounds are capable of conducting electricity when dissolved in solvents such as water at the level of individual atoms, ions or molecules (Silberberg, 2010). Dissolving an ionic salt in water destroys its lattice structure and the individual cations and anions dissociate through the body of the water. This ionic dissociation results in the surrounding water molecules getting attracted to the released ions (Lewis & Evans, 2011) and forming hydration shells. This process is referred to as dissolution (Lower, 2013). Sometimes, the dissolved ions may collide with each other and recrystallize (Silberberg, 2010). According to Reed (2013), if enough salt is added to the water then a saturated solution is obtained where the rate at which the ions dissolve equals the rate at which they recrystallize and the system is in equilibrium. At this point, the concentration does not change any further for specific temperature and pressure.
At any given temperature, the maximum amount of solute that dissolves in a fixed quantity of particular solvent determines the degree of solubility (Chang & Goldsby, 2014). For most ionic compounds, changes made to the temperature affect the
The purpose of this experiment is to examine the extent to which the temperature and presence of common ions affect the amount of copper sulphate salt that can dissolve in 100 grams of water until it reaches saturation. In order to achieve the aims of this experiment, a methodical approach is taken to measure solubility of the salt at three different temperatures and then construct a solubility curve for copper sulphate. Additionally, copper sulphate is reacted with sodium hydroxide to investigate further the effect of common ions on