Salinity and Salt Solution, the Dummy Version

Salt Dissolved in Water

One of our researchers claims that the quickest way to find an eHow.com freelancer spreading dumbassery is simply to google variations of the words "communications major" for the site. She may well be right, although substituting the word "journalism" for "communications" would probably be just as effective. Whatever the case, the example she provided is a Texan named Natalie Andrews, who unwisely left her travel and decorating safe zones while attempting to explain to the world "How Much Water Is Needed to Dissolve Salt," currently decorating Leaf Group's niche site Sciencing.com...

As is typical of eHow.com drones trapped by the site's minimum word count, Andrews answered the question... sort of... in the first hundred words or so; then got herself in trouble with some of the factoids she used for padding. Natalie's original answer?

"At room temperature, you need at least 100 grams of water to dissolve around 35 grams of salt..."

...which is more or less true. A gram of water can dissolve 0.357g of salt at 20°C, so we'd have been inclined to round up to 36 rather than down to 35, but it's close enough for eHow work. Once she'd gotten that out of the way, however, Natalie was forced to start interpreting and rewording the same sort of technical information she tried to avoid by getting a "communications" degree. Take, for instance, this claim:

"Most substances diffuse in water at direct proportion to temperature increase." Apparently the content editor thought she should stop using "dissolve" or perhaps "solubility" so much, so Andrews substituted a word that, in reality, doesn't fit. And then there's this: "Salt dissolves faster in hot water than in cold water. Conversely to heating, salt lowers the temperature at which water freezes." The first sentence is sort of true; she really should have said that salt is more soluble in hot water. Natalie's  second sentence? while also more or less true, "conversely to heating" makes no sense, nor are the sentences remotely parallel. She went on to "explain" how salt lowers the freezing temperature:

"Adding salt as the solute to water (solvent) at water's freezing temperature disrupts the equilibrium of water. Salt molecules compete with and displace the water molecules, but will repel ice that is formed at this juncture. "

Clearly, Andrews had no idea that dissolution of salt means there are no longer "salt molecules" -- free sodium and chlorine ions in the water (see title image) slow the crystallization process, not "salt molecules."

Given her level of misinterpretation and misinformation about one of the most basic topics in chemistry, is it any wonder that the Antisocial Network has decided she's deserving of the Dumbass of the Day award? We didn't think so.

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