Say you leave a puddle of bleach lying on the ground for a week. Would all the chlorine evaporate and simply leave behind inert, pH-neutral, useless powder?
it would oxidize whatever it could and be used up likely before all the water (95%) has evaporated.
Prior (brief) thread on the subject, discussing in detail the chemical reaction. (ETA: See especially Posts #2 and 5.)
Bleach is a solution of sodium hypochlorite, NaOCl. It is rather unstable, and rather quickly decomposes to oxygen and sodium chloride in solution.
When you jump into a swimming pool, note the cloud of little bubbles that appears. Jumping into plain water doesn’t create all that many little bubbles. It’s the chlorine (actually, sodium hypochlorite) in the water breaking down and releasing all that oxygen. The oxygen (some of which is dissolved in the water) can oxidize impurities in the water. I suppose the chlorine would to, as it’s also a powerful oxidizer.
:dubious: How come bleach smells of chlorine, then?
There is a leakage of Cl.
Most of the smell from bleaching is from after the chlorine has hit organics… There’s smelly stuff like fatty acids that become chlorinated and they have the chlorine smell after that.
A leakage of Cl[sub]2[/sub], please. Cl would be an isolated atom, the molecule is Cl[sub]2[/sub].