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Content and layout

Solubility table

Add a solubility table of common salts and bases to a worksheet and highlight the ions your task is about, so students find the right cell quickly.

When to use it

Use it when students need to look up whether a compound dissolves in water: predicting a precipitate, explaining what they saw in a practical, or checking an answer. Each cell, where a cation and an anion meet, shows a symbol: S for soluble, SS for slightly soluble, I for insoluble and – where the compound does not exist. The legend gives the figures behind each symbol, for example below 0.1 g/100 ml for insoluble.

It is a reference, not a question: students read it and nothing is submitted.

Setting it up

  1. In a worksheet, use the + between two items and choose Solubility table. Its settings appear next to it; later, the pencil opens them again.

  2. Under Display options, choose what is shown with the table: Title, Legend and Activity series (the electrochemical series of metals). Print mode swaps the colours for patterns that still read in black and white.

  3. Under Orientation, choose Anions as rows or Cations as rows.

  4. Under Highlighting, pick ions in Highlight cations and Highlight anions. With both chosen, every cell except where they meet is dimmed; with only one kind chosen, its whole rows or columns stay bright. Highlight metals marks metals in the activity series, and Clear All removes every highlight.

  5. Click the tick when you are done.

What students do

Students see the table with your highlights. When they point at it, two buttons appear in its top corner: one opens the table enlarged, which helps on a small screen, and one downloads it as an SVG image. The cells themselves cannot be clicked: students follow the row and the column to where they meet, read the symbol, and look up its meaning in the legend.

Tips

  • Highlighting both ions shows students the answer cell. To make them do the lookup, highlight only the anion (or only the cation) and let them find the other.

  • Ask students to quote the legend in their answer, for example insoluble, below 0.1 g/100 ml, so they justify it with data rather than just a letter.

  • Turn off the activity series when the task is only about solubility; the table is easier to read on its own.