koolaid
Vinegar and acid
Neither, the solvent is the liquid that you disolve a solid in
Water is a single compound so it cannot be a solute and solvent at the same time.If you have a drop of alcohol in a bucket of water then water is the solvent, but if you have a drop of water in a bucket of alcohol then water is the solute.
Alcohol is a type of organic solvent. Regardless, when alcohol is the majority of a mixture, it is considered the solvent, and when something else is the majority of the mixture, it is the solute.
In wine the solute is ethyl alcohol and solvent is water.
The solvent is usually the larger part of the solution which dissolves the solute. The solute is the smaller part which gets dissolved. So as an example, seawater is a solution. The solvent is water and the solute is salt and traces of other minerals. Vinegar is also a solution. Again, water is the solvent and glacial acetic acid is the solute. To do acid values in resin chemistry, methanolic KOH solution is usually the titrant. In this example, methanol is the solvent and KOH is the solute.
Diethyl Ether, Naphtha, Xylene, Toluene, Petroleum Distillates, etc.
The solute is iodine. The solvent is a mixture of alcohol and water. There is no single fixed ratio for the mixture of alcohol and water but it usually is around a 50/50 mixture of water and alcohol with the iodine ranging from about 2% to 7% in concentration.
In the context of alcohol as a solute, the solvent would be the liquid in which the alcohol is dissolved. For example, if you mix ethanol (alcohol) in water, ethanol is the solute and water is the solvent.
Examples of solutions with a liquid solvent include saltwater (water as the solvent with salt dissolved in it), vinegar (acetic acid dissolved in water), and ethanol (alcohol dissolved in water).
70% alcohol signifies the amount the alcohol present in 100 ml of the solution. Considering the solvent to be water, 70% alcohol contains 70ml alcohol and 30ml water. Thus, the total comes out to 70 + 30 = 100ml. That's what the "%" signifies - (out of 100!)
Salt dissolves faster in water than in alcohol. This is because water is a polar solvent, which interacts more effectively with the ionic bonds of salt molecules, facilitating their dissolution. Alcohol, on the other hand, is a nonpolar solvent and is less efficient at breaking down the ionic bonds in salt.