Walking on chemistry

Who needs walking on air or on thin ice? It's all about walking on chemistry. By walking on chemistry, I mean the reaction between salt and ice on the ground. Since a snow storm recently hit the east cost like a brick, why not blog about this! Also while shoveling, don't make too big of a pile in one spot or else it will all fall and you won't just be hit with snow but more disappointment realizing you have to shovel all of it again! This is from a first-hand experience.

So now to the chemistry at hand! With a simple understanding of the states of matter, water molecules become more packed and orderly when they change into ice. By adding salt, the melting point is lowered. A known property of ionic compounds, like sodium chloride, is that they are highly soluble. After dissolving in water, the sodium and chlorine ions interfere with the bonding of water molecules preventing the formation of ice. So to make a real world analogy, salt is like a third wheel! It gets between a couple (in this case water) so they can't bond like they normally would! More salt, or third wheels, will result in an even lower melting point. Then when the water dissolves, this is like the couple getting pissed and leaving. Read more in the article: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/why-does-salt-melt-road-ice/

This wasn't in the article, but one time my dad explained how salt actually causes potholes in roads. If you really don't care, then just skip to the conclusion of this post. But for all of you who do care, woo you! So it's known salt melts ice to water. This water can then move into smaller holes in the road and can then freeze again due to the cold weather. Due to a unique property of hydrogen bonding with water, the volume of water molecules increases from a liquid to a solid. This causes bigger holes! This is also why some communities use sand so it provides traction but doesn't make holes. So if this really gets you mad, you can go yell in the street at the water molecules for changing physical states. Don't be surprised if you get some strange looks from your neighbors!

Since I live in New Jersey, using salt on roads and sidewalks is routine! So many people use it so often but have no idea why it happens! The snow can't be hot, or else it'd just melt the bag it's in! That wouldn't make sense either because you don't burn your tongue when you put salt on your food. Most articles I found just told me salt lowers the melting point of water, but I want to know what happens on a molecular level that makes this happen! More people should have this curiosity to learn why certain things happen. Now for round two of this snow storm.