Which sugar is less soluble in water?
Answers
Why is sugar more soluble than common salt in water?
Sucrose (which is only one of many different kinds of sugars) is more soluble (in mass terms-see below) in water at room temp than table salt (sodium chloride). This result would be hard to predict simply from considering that salts generally are highly water soluble and sucrose is a large organic molecule. Sucrose has six hydroxyl groups which means it can make numerous hydrogen bonds with water, contributing to its high solubility. Salt is an ionic molecule and so will dissolve into sodium and chloride ions in a polar solvent such as water. Setting aside these considerations, we look to empirical evidence to provide the answer. Whereas x grams of salt will dissolve in some specific volume of water, 6x grams of sucrose will dissolve in that same volume. Meanwhile, the molecular weight of sucrose is about 6 times that of salt. So about the same number of moles (or about the same number of molecules) of sucrose and salt will dissolve in a given amount of water. Numbers here are approximate.