How much will dissolve?
Add a little of a solute to a solvent and it disappears. Keep adding. Does it go on disappearing for ever?
Activity 3.1.6 — salt in water
Measure 100 ml of water into a clean beaker. Weigh out 100 g of clean salt (NaCl). Add the salt to the water a small amount at a time, stirring with a glass rod to dissolve it, and do not add the next amount until the last one has completely dissolved. When an amount will not dissolve, stop adding and weigh what is left. What mass of salt, roughly, dissolved in the 100 ml of water?
Activity 3.1.7 — calcium hydroxide in water
Weigh out 10 g of calcium hydroxide. Take 100 ml of water in a beaker and add the calcium hydroxide a very little at a time, stirring with a glass rod. When what you add no longer dissolves, add no more and weigh what is left. What mass dissolved in the 100 g of water?
What the two activities show together
Both stopped. Neither solute went on dissolving for ever. And the mass that dissolved was not the same for the two — in equal volumes of water, some solutes dissolve in large amounts and others in very small ones.
The point where it stops
At a given temperature there is a maximum concentration at which a substance can stay in solution. A solution that has reached it has a name.
Saturated solution
A solution holding as much of that solute as it can at that temperature is said to be saturated with it. Add more and the extra simply sits at the bottom undissolved.
Not the same word you met in lipids
Grade 10 used saturated of a fatty acid, meaning its carbon chain has no double bonds. That is a different sense entirely. A saturated solution is about how much has dissolved, not about bonds.
Why the method is so fussy
Both activities insist on adding a little at a time and waiting for it to dissolve before adding more. Tip it all in at once and undissolved solid sits at the bottom long before the solution is actually full, and the figure you weigh back is wrong.