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What kind of bonding is responsible for the slight solubility of air in water?

Answer 1

There is no bonding involved here.

Air dissolves in water by interspersing itself amongst water molecules. Air consists entirely of gas molecules and atoms, which tend to be only slightly soluble in water (particularly if the molecules aren't polar, but nonpolar instead).

The slight solubility is also in part due to gases simply being fast-moving particles, having a high escaping tendency (or activity coefficient).

The main intermolecular force that allows this slight solubility is the weakest of them all, London Dispersion, since air is mostly #"N"_2# and #"O"_2#, maybe some #"Ar"# and miscellaneous gases.

I reiterate: no chemical bonding is involved.

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Answer 2

Naomi Aronson

The slight solubility of air in water is primarily due to weak van der Waals forces, which include dispersion forces and dipole-dipole interactions.

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Answer from HIX Tutor

When evaluating a one-sided limit, you need to be careful when a quantity is approaching zero since its sign is different depending on which way it is approaching zero from. Let us look at some examples.