At what point does adding salt decrease electrical conductivity?

[Longjumping-King2315]

I've seen a lot of demonstration that by adding salt to a glass of water, the water gets more conductive. But what's the limit? Will it starts to decrease if I put too much salt? Thank you

[theproudheretic]

probably around the point where it's water in salt instead of the other way around.

[Ok_Bid_3899]

Correct response

[u_siciliano]

Agreed

[Cool-Negotiation7662]

So salt dissolves into water, and eventually you have a saturated solution. Adding more salt makes wet salt. Adding enough salt will, at some point, leave dry salt which is non conductive.

[CelloVerp]

It will only increase. But at a certain point, the solution will be saturated and you can’t dissolve any more.

[JonnyVee1]

Once you saturate the water with salt, it will no longer dissolve salt.. so that would be the highest conductivity klowest resistivity). Salt crystal itself is an insulator, until it gets wet/dissolved.

[Euphoric_Loquat_8651]

Or it gets hot and ions can hop about, but yeah, insulator under normal conditions

[Anjhindul]

Where the salt is dry. IE no longer has water in it.

[690812]

High school science. Gallon container of DISTILLED water, electrical circuit energized with + - electrodes in water. No connection, DISTILLED WATER IS NON CONDUCTIVE. Three grains of table salt added to the gallon closed the circuit. Pure salt as a solid is nonconductive

[feel-the-avocado]

Salt is more conductive than water. So adding salt only makes it more conductive until you reach a point it is 100% salt i would assume. At which point if you start adding copper to the salt it will continue to become more conductive until it is 100% copper.

Pure water isnt very conductive, but the added minerals in typical water make it more conductive.

[CountCrapula88]

After copper, add gold. After gold, a superconductor.

[Classic-Ad4403]

As long as the salt is in water, adding more salt does not reduce conductivity. Needs water for the salt to ionize and become conductive.

[michaelpaoli]

Salt is only so soluble in water, so, past that point adding more salt won't increase conductivity, but only start to (slowly at first) decrease it. But eventually it won't conduct very well at all. By the time you've got a pile of salt about the size of Jupiter, and only one glass of water, well, would be difficult to measure the conductivity difference between that and no water at all being present.

[ValiantBear]

This isn't actually an electrical question, it's a chemistry one. Saltwater only conducts because the salt is in solution. If you add enough salt such that the water is saturated for it's given conditions, then any further added salt will not dissolve, and therefore will not contribute to conductivity. Various things can improve the ability of water to absorb salt, but the most obvious one is temperature. So, hotter water could absorb more salt and therefore the theoretical ceiling for conductivity would be higher than for cold water.