Even greatly simplified, it’s pretty important to understand the difference between a salt and a covalently bonded compound – sodium and chloride don’t really s

Even greatly simplified, it’s pretty important to understand the difference between a salt and a covalently bonded compound – sodium and chloride don’t really stay together, nice and inert; they disassociate readily in a solution. Salt water has individual sodium and chlorine ions freely floating around. But being ions now, both have gotten what they wanted, and are quite content and nonreactive now.