In this laboratory work, we compared the rate of dissolution of crystalline sugar in equal amounts of water at room temperature, depending on the degree of crushing of the cube. In particular, two of the four sugar cubes were ground to presumably the same consistency, while the remaining two cubes were not affected in any way. Afterward, all four sugar cubes were placed in transparent glasses, where water was poured. The time taken to dissolve was measured.
Table 1 was compiled for the convenience of visualization of information obtained during this experiment.
Table 1. Experimental data on time measurement.
As can be seen from Table 1, the time spent on shredded sugar cubes was, on average, four times less than what it took for the unground ones.
Such results may indicate that the degree of crushing of a crystalline substance directly affects the dissolution rate in the solvent. Since the unspoiled sugar cubes reacted for a long time, it means that mechanical grinding can reduce the dissolution time. If one checks this information in the sources, one can find that, in fact, the connection between the grinding area and the dissolution rate is as follows: the authors point out that this effect is due to the removal of the mass of the substance from the substrate by diffusion (Seager et al., 2018). In other words, the tiniest sugar crystals are detached from the massive particle since the water dipoles create a hydration shell around the sugar molecules.
References
Seager, R. J., Acevedo, A. J., Spill, F., & Zaman, M. H. (2018). Solid dissolution in a fluid solvent is characterized by the interplay of surface area-dependent diffusion and physical fragmentation.Scientific Reports, 8(1), 1-17. Web.