we already know a little bit about Solutions we know that they are homogeneous mixtures of two or more substances and typically these substances will be present in differing concentrations with the substance present in greater amount being the solvent and the substances in lesser amounts being the solute or solutes such as is the case with salt water from the ocean Solutions can consist of different phases of matter and very frequently they will consist of a solid dissolved in a liquid like sugar and water if we wish to denote that a solute has dissolved in solvent we can use a subscript to do so here we see the transformation that occurs when solid sugar dissolves in water which we will then call aqueous this means that the individual sugar molecules have separated and are distributed evenly throughout the solution sugar or sucrose is a covalent compound but ionic compounds can also dissolve in water to form aqueous Solutions furthermore ionic compounds will not just dissolve but also dissociate that is they will split up into their respective ions we can see here that potassium dichromate does not merely go from solid to aqueous but will split up into potassium ions and dichromate ions in order to make ion dipole interactions with water molecules although these are common types of solutions we can also have Solutions where substances are dissolved in gases or even solids an alloy is a solution in which one metal is dissolved in another like a penny which contains Trace Amounts of nickel dissolved in Copper even the Earth's atmosphere is a solution because it is a homogeneous solution of gases mainly oxygen nitrogen and carbon dioxide and solids liquids and gases can also all dissolve in liquids as well the common characteristics of solutions are as follows Solutions are homogeneous mixtures and they exist in the phase of the solvent so if a gas is dissolved in a liquid the solution will be a liquid and the components of the solution are dispersed on a molecular scale so the solute stays dissolved and is spread out evenly amongst the solvent particles and now we know a bit more about Solutions