science fair (dissolving pills)

[deleted-836836]

so for my science fair, I am doing an experiment involving the dissolving of pills. and I ran into the question of: what exactly is considered dissolved. there appears to be no objective way to determine if something is dissolved. I figure stirring the water when it looks dissolved may work, but wouldn't that affect the results if it is not already completely dissolved? thanks.

[deleted-810040]

Hello plsvaxxurkids,

Essentially, if a substance is dissolved, it has been "broken down" and incorporated into a solvent (which is, in this case, water).

In order to determine whether or not you actually need to decide chemically/objectively if the pill has dissolved, you need to determine how/if you intend to graph whether or not it dissolved; if you do not plan to graph this, then it may not entirely necessary to be able to record this information numerically or find out exactly whether or not the pill is completely dissolved. Therefore, it would be helpful if you could provide more detailed information about your project, such as what you plan to graph and how you intend to graph your results.

Stirring the water when the pill appears to be dissolved will definitely prove to be an inaccurate method of determining whether or not the pill has completely dissolved. This is mainly due to the fact that the stirring will cause a pill that is not entirely broken down yet to dissolve at a faster rate, in turn causing it to end up more dissolved than it would have under normal circumstances (i.e. you end up with inaccurate results).