What Is Osmolarity?

Salt (NaCl) is made out of sodium (Na) and Cloride (Cl). It can be precipitated out of - big surprise
here - saltwater. But what happens in the reverse situation? What happens if we put salt into
water? It will dissolve and dissociate into sodium (Na+) and chloride (Cl-) particles (ions) to create
a saltwater solution.
The sum of the molarities of the dissolved particles of a solution is known as osmolarity, denoted
by the unit of osmol. There are other ways by which osmolarity can be defined, but because this
lesson focuses on the mathematical aspects of osmolarity, we're going to stick to that definition in
order to keep things straight and simple for the rest of this lesson.

Definitions and Formula

In case the definition caught you off-guard with some new terms, let's quickly cover some basic
things so we're all on the same page. And in case you didn't know, a solute is the substance
being dissolved by the solvent in order to create a solution. Sugar, is the solute when being
dissolved by water, the solvent, in order to create a sweet solution.
Molarity, denoted by the unit M, is the number of moles of a solute dissolved in one liter (L) of
solution, thus M can be written as moles per liter, or mol/L. Remember, osmolarity can be
defined as the sum of the molarities of the the dissolved particles of a solution. Now that we've
straightened all of that out, here's a quick and easy formula for osmolarity:
osmolarity (osmol) = (# of moles of dissolved particles) / (# of liters of solution)

Calculation
This sounds harder than it is, so let's do some practice calculations using our familiar salt and
sugar examples. Since we started this lesson with salt, let's start our calculations with salt as well.