Groundhog Day Birthday

[whoiam]

heh... not as awake as you thought? Sodium Chloride dissociates into ions in the water. Of course, the sodium no longer has it's outer electron - having 'donated' it to the chlorine - and so it can no longer react with the water as such. Instead, the sodium and chlorine ions just form complexes with the water molecules. This being how they dissolve in the water, y'see.

What e of pi was describing was salt's reaction in already saturated water - i.e., to remain salt and gather at the bottom of the container/ocean. ((the reason it has an explosive reaction with water in the first place is that the lone outer electron gets 'donated' to the oxygen if there is no chlorine (or equivalent) for it to react with. This forces the oxygen atom to lose the bond to one of it's hydrogen atoms, releasing pure, hot hydrogen. Guess what happens when large quantities of hot, flammable gas are released into the air?))