Salt Water Conducts

Does electricity travel through saltwater?
- mike
south dakota

Yes. Salts are chemicals which fall apart into ions when they dissolve in solution. Ions have positive or negative electrical charge. Salts obviously form both positive and negative ions, since the total electrical charge doesn’t change, and is almost exactly zero. When there’s an electric field on the solution, the positive ions flow one way and the negative ions flow the other way, giving an electrical current.

Mike W.

(published on 10/22/2007)