For instance, the colour of a salt solution is the colour obtained by the superposition of the colours of the ions and the colour of any undissociated salt that may be present.
Solid copper chloride is brown or yellow, so that its concentrated solution, which contains both ions and undissociated molecules, is green, but changes to blue as water is added and the ionization becomes complete.
In other cases, such as that of litmus, both the ion and the undissociated molecule are coloured, but in different ways.
Let x be the number of molecules which dissociate per second when the number of undissociated molecules in unit volume is unity, then in a dilute solution where the molecules do not interfere with each other, xp is the number when the concentration is p. Recombination can only occur when two ions meet, and since the frequency with which this will happen is, in dilute solution, proportional to the square of the ionic concentration, we shall get for the number of molecules re-formed in one second ye where q is the number of dissociated molecules in one cubic centimetre.
The number of undissociated molecules is then I - a, so that if V be the volume of the solution containing I gramme-molecule of the dissolved substance, we get q= and p= (I - a)/V, hence x(I - a) V =yd/V2, and constant = k.