Lesson · Grade 5 · Science
Separating Salt Water: Evaporation, Crystallization and Distillation
- Grade 5
- Science
- 1 min 15 s
- British Columbia
- BC5-SC-07
Salt dissolves in a heated flask of water, and as the water evaporates the salt stays behind until there is too little water to dissolve it all, so salt crystals form. A tube then carries the water vapour to a test tube in cold water, where it condenses into pure water, so distillation gets the water back as well as the salt.
Concept: Separating a solution: evaporation, crystallization and distillation
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In one sentence
The question this lesson answers
Salt dissolves in water to make a solution called salt water.
The salt is still there, in tiny particles too small to see.
Transcript
What the lesson says
Salt dissolves in water to make a solution called salt water.
The salt is still there, in tiny particles too small to see.
So how can we get the salt back out of the water?
First, we heat the salt water.
The water evaporates, which means it turns into a gas called water vapour.
The salt stays behind, so the water that is left gets saltier.
Soon there is too little water to keep all the salt dissolved.
So some salt comes out as solid crystals, and this is called crystallization.
But the water vapour escapes into the air, so we lose the water.
To keep the water, we send the vapour through a tube to a test tube in cold water.
In the cold test tube, the vapour cools and condenses back into liquid water.
This is called distillation, and the water we collect is pure.
Now the salt and the water are separated again.
Evaporation leaves the salt behind, and distillation saves the water too.
Curriculum
Where this fits
The outcomes and strands follow the British Columbia curriculum.
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