Note 46 — Chapter I · ON WATER AND ITS COMPOUNDS

If solutions are regarded as being in a state of dissociation (see footnote 19, p. 64) it would be expected that they would contain free molecules of water, which form one of the products of the decomposition of those definite compounds whose formation is the cause of solution. In separating as ice or vapour, water makes, with a solution, a heterogeneous system (made up of substances in different physical states) similar, for instance, to the formation of a precipitate or volatile substance in reactions of double decomposition.