Science Common Sense


1317 - What is the concept of solution and how is it represented by weight percent (P%) and parts per million (ppm)?

Imagine you have a big jar of lemonade (the solution). The lemonade is made of two main things: water (the solvent) and sugar (the solute). A solution is when a solute (like sugar or salt) mixes with a solvent (like water) to create a new mixture.

Now, we want to talk about how to measure how much solute is in the solvent. There are two ways to do this: weight percent (P%) and parts per million (ppm).

Weight Percent (P%): This is like a proportion. Let's say you have 20 grams of sugar (the solute) in 80 grams of water (the solvent). To find the weight percent, you divide the weight of the solute (20g) by the total weight of the solution (20g + 80g = 100g), and then multiply by 100.

P% = (weight of solute / total weight of solution) x 100 In this case, P% = (20g / 100g) x 100 = 20%

Parts per Million (ppm): This is like a very small unit of measurement. Imagine 1 million tiny drops of water. If you have 1 tiny drop of sugar in those 1 million drops of water, that's 1 ppm.

To calculate ppm, you divide the weight of the solute by the total weight of the solution, and then multiply by 1,000,000.

ppm = (weight of solute / total weight of solution) x 1,000,000 In the same example as above, ppm = (20g / 100g) x 1,000,000 = 200,000 ppm (which is equal to 20% or 200g/kg).

So, both P% and ppm are ways to measure how much of something (the solute) is in a solution, but P% is like a percentage, while ppm is like counting really small parts!