I'm making ham stew and I sprinkle salt on top of the liquid. Will is disperse?

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The dispersion of salt in a ham stew is primarily influenced by convection and diffusion. While diffusion is a slow process, convection becomes significant when the stew is near boiling at 100°C, even without vigorous boiling. Effective mixing can be achieved by stirring, but if left untouched, the salt will disperse due to convective flow, especially if sprinkled in various locations. Initial placement of salt can enhance dispersion, leveraging the temperature gradient for better mixing.

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What are the factors affecting dispersion of salt in a mixture?

Obviously stirring will guarantee effective mixing, but I'm wondering how much I could expect the salt to disperse throughout the stew if I were to not touch it.

The stew is near/at boiling (100 C), but it is not vigorously boiling, so I don't expect any convective mass transport of the salt. I expect diffusion alone to drive the movement of the salt ions.
 
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Diffusion is very slow (you can probably neglect it for reasonable cooking times) - even without visible boiling, you have convective flow, at least if heat comes from the bottom.
 
pa5tabear said:
What are the factors affecting dispersion of salt in a mixture?

Obviously stirring will guarantee effective mixing, but I'm wondering how much I could expect the salt to disperse throughout the stew if I were to not touch it.

The stew is near/at boiling (100 C), but it is not vigorously boiling, so I don't expect any convective mass transport of the salt. I expect diffusion alone to drive the movement of the salt ions.

what he said. diffusion is slow, convection will dominate as long as the temperature gradient is big enough. also you can sprinkle the salt at different places so that the initial conditions are more dispersed.