Will distilled water conduct electricity?

A. This may be a bit advanced for 5th grade, Kassie...

Everything is relative, so yes, distilled water will conduct electricity--but very very little compared to city water, well water, or salt water. The reason is that the way a liquid conducts electricity is for the positively or negatively charged ions that are in it actually moving from one of the electrodes to the other, carrying their positive or negative charge (electricity) with them. Salt water has salt in it, NaCl, which readily ionizes or dissociates to ions of Na+ and Cl- which can float through the water carrying charge and thus conducting electricity.

Distilled water is water that was boiled to steam and re-condensed to water. Virtually all the salt that was originally in it is left behind as the pure water boils away. So distilled water is relatively pure H₂O (HOH). There is only a very tiny amount of salt left in it, and although water can ionize to H+ and OH- sort of like salt does, it ionizes to a far, far, far, lesser degree and is therefore very resistant to conducting electricity; there are virtually no ions available to carry charges through the water, so it is very high resistance, very low conductivity.

A. Hi, Edward. Yes you can run electrical devices submerged in very very pure water. But distilled water may not be pure enough. And as soon as you put the PC in the water, salts from soldering fluxes and other sources will start contaminating the water so it's no longer de-ionized. You probably would need to recirculate the water through a very capable deionization system such as is used to generate ultra pure water for semiconductor fabrication to remove that salt, catching all the salts that start dissolving from the PC so you can keep the water pure enough to not conduct. This is the theory, but it's probably a dangerous and impractical experiment for a student.

Regards,

A. Water doesn't conduct electricity at all ... sorry but it is true.

A. I suspect that it won't work, Barbara. Liquids do not conduct electricity anywhere near as well as metal. Do not use a higher voltage battery, as it could start getting dangerous. But start by putting the two wires very close together in a bowl of wet salt. If that doesn't work, it doesn't work. If it does, use more water and less salt until it doesn't work to track the results. Good luck.

A. Interesting. I was just pondering this subject -- nice to know that others are inquiring. I have always said that water is a poor conductor, never knew any specifics though. I have ran many 12 V DC applications completely submerged in H20 with no issue.

Hi Jimmy. Sound like a reasonable conclusion to me.

Regards,

A. Certainly, Arif. That's exactly what deionizers do. Please try to flesh out your inquiry a bit for us. Thanks!

A. The cheap ones just exchange the poorly soluble calcium salts for soluble sodium salt? IE: water softeners. Ion exchange and reverse osmosis actually remove all or most of the metal salts.

A. I am the father of a second grader who is learning how water conducts.

Our experiment was performed with one AA battery, three cups half filled with water and different amounts of salt, and an electric motor.

At first we used a wire for the contact but found that the wire only bubbled when the battery was applied.

That didn't mean we needed more electricity or salt, it meant that we needed more surface area.
So we attached some aluminum foil to the end of each wire that was in the cups and then it worked.

In most cases, electricity travels around the outside of a solid object first.

In a liquid, because a liquid is always in motion, energy will move through the inside with ease.

In our experiment, we increased the surface area of the solid so the maximum amount of metal was touching the liquid, so the maximum amount of electricity could be transferred.
Hope this helps.

Diodes only allow electricity to flow in one direction, Jason, so the polarity should matter. I'm surprised that it could work if the diodes were reversed, but I may have misunderstood your description. I note this so that if you start getting anomalous results, of when current flows and when it doesn't, the direction of the diodes can account for the current not flowing.

First things first, Private Bell: THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE TO OUR COUNTRY!

Very pure water used in semi-conductor fabrication is 18 megaohm-cm. You can compare this to other materials and see that the resistance is very very high. Pure water conducts very very little, but it conducts. Pure water conducts very very slightly because H2O very very very slightly ionizes to H+ and O--^^OH- and/or because it is impossible to remove every single contaminating ion.

Water will not ionize to give you doubly charged O (i.e., O--) but rather hydronium (H3O+) and hydroxide (OH-). The protons don't just break off, they have to be taken off.

Just adding my chemist hat's two cents :)

Absolutely, Eric. I can't account for my writing something which was so obviously and knowingly wrong. Must have been on my 3rd nightcap :-)

You and I grew up in a different world from today, Jan. Passing house current through water for a high school science project would be recklessly dangerous with its potential for electrocution.

Maybe capturing the hydrogen evolved from the passage of current, as well as measuring the current with a multimeter may make the experiment more interesting. If you are a mad scientist, maybe it could be rigged up to burn the hydrogen as it's evolved.

A. Yes, very pure water does conduct a little.
I would definitely suggest that connecting household current directly into a container of water is unscientific and dangerous. If you really want to know, find yourself a decent multimeter, set it to megohms, and stick the probes in the water. Failing that, get a very cheap calculator and stick it in distilled water. If it stops working properly, you'll have your answer.

A. I'd like to take a scientific stab at answering this question for the readers.
Electricity flows because of the transmission of energy through ions, which can be referred to as charged particles.
Like it has been said on this forum before, water can ionize in an aqueous (liquid) form to the less common H30+ and OH- ions. This causes water to be a very weak electrolyte no matter how many times it is boiled or deionized.
Other liquids like sugar or car antifreeze, don't break down into ions in liquid form, therefore they don't conduct electricity unless they have impurities. Even molecules that ionize in water won't conduct electricity if they are in a solid form (salt in the shaker).
It has been proposed that water makes energy and that an increase in ion concentration (adding more salt) will increase the current flow or voltage. If the bulb were connected to the battery on one pole and a wire attached to the other pole leading to a container of water, another wire could be strung from the other pole of the battery and this would make the glass of water a switch or resistor. The wires could be removed/replaced in the water to connect the circuit; the resistance of the water could be lowered by increasing the amount of ions in the water (which could be increased by adding salt or other substances that ionize in an aqueous solution). Ohm's law says Voltage = Current / Resistance, so the less resistance the higher the voltage and the brighter the bulb.
Water is generally harnessed through it's kinetic energy or through energy gained from it's disassociation/re association (i.e., hydrogen fuel cell).

A. Hi, Laura. Experienced researchers usually do the research first and the experiments second to save some effort. But those researchers have self confidence and expertise formed from many years of prior experience, and they can usually be trusted to honestly record their findings when they differ from what their research led them to believe would happen (unless they are starving climatologists).

But I think students should do the experiment first and the research later because a young student will almost never have the experience and self confidence to trust their own findings when they don't agree with the research. And consequently they will carefully practice and carefully learn "junk science" (learning to subtly lie to themself and adjust what they "saw" to match the answer they're 'supposed' to get).

So tell us what results she got when she tried to get electricity to flow through soda and orange juice, and then we'll try to help her understand those results. Good luck.

Regards,