Biology Water Labs

In Biology, we’ve been learning about water. We learned that water is the universal solvent. A solvent is a liquid that a substance dissolves in. To prove this point we conducted an experiment. On lab day, we conducted our first one. We poured 10 mL of water into four different test tubes. Next, we added either sodium chloride (also known as table salt), sugar, baking soda, or epsom salts. We set a timer and after one minute, we saw how much the substance had dissolved by comparing it to a test tube that had the same amount of the substance in it. Then, we shook the tube ten times and wrote down how much it had dissolved. We continued to shake it ten times and record our data until we had reached 50 shakes.

The next day, we conducted our second experiment. We repeated the process described above, but this time we used isopropyl alcohol and mineral oil (also known as baby oil) instead of water. The results were very interesting. The water dissolved the substances almost twice as well as the alcohol or mineral oil did. Thus, proving that water is the universal solvent.