High School Chemistry Help?

Question

anonymous · Answer

Okay so my assignment says this: Your job is to research a real-world application of a colligative property and present your findings as an article for a newspaper, magazine, or web site.

Can you guys give me some ideas for this? Or websites I can go to? I need to list at least 3 websites for this assingment too. 

thanks a lot for help?

anonymous · Answer

so basicially just help finding a real world example of a colligative property.

geometry_hater · Answer

This site lists some pretty cool Chemistry sites http://apps.exploratorium.edu/10cool/index.php?category=4&cmd=browse

anonymous · Answer

A few come to mind:

(1) The use of salt to melt on roads in the winter.

(2) The use of osmotic pressure measurements to determine the molecular weight of proteins and polymers.

(3) The use of "reverse osmosis" desalinators to produce fresh water from salt.  I vaguely recall hearing that Santa Barbara gets most of its water this way, and there was a "Build It Bigger" cable-TV show on a massive RO plant being built in Australia.

(4)  I think some ice-skating rinks use salt water as the cold fluid that flows underneath the ice, freezing the water.  The use of lots of salt keeps the saltwater liquid at a temperature that freezes the fresh water above it.

(5) A very strange application, which I hope I remember correctly: it seems slugs and other things that slither on a bed of slime do not attempt to produce the slime themselves -- it would require too much water from inside their bodies.  Instead, they secrete globules of "dehydrated slime," which attracts water from the environment through the osmotic effect, turning into the fully hydrated and slippery slime.  It think the absorption is drive by osmotic pressure, but I can't be certain I remember if that's all there is to it.