I am trying to understand what kind of experiments have been preformed which have led us to the conclusion that ionic compounds like NaCl in something like water disassociate. From my understanding of the term disassociate this means to no longer be together or to be separate. So I wonder if this was the case how are saltwater purifiers working how is it that salt water purifiers do not sometimes pull more Na+ then Cl-. Maybe we are being taught using incorrect verbiage. Like not that they are completely dissociating but instead like we already teach ionic bonds are not particularly strong bonds and thus are easily persuaded to form other compounds which have stronger bonds. I am asking because I cannot seem to get a straight answer from any of my professors on the subject. A thought experiment I often ask them when they are adamant that they truly are dissociated is if we took 100mL’s of a solution of aqueous NaCl ( about 10% salt by volume) then take a syringe of 10mL’s of the solution and tested how much Na+ and Cl- was in the 10ml syringe there would still be 10% NaCl in the syringe so how can we say that the compound has dissociated? Is there some magic happening that causes them to be present in the same amount every time or is there still a bond between them?
