Abstract
The objective: The objective of our project is to determine which of four different salt species in solution is the best conductor of electricity. We devised this experiment because we want to build a Tesla Coil that uses a saltwater tank capacitor. Most coil builders use sodium chloride in the tank. Our current experiment, on ionic species and electrical conductivity (EC), provides us with the first information we need
Methods/Materials
Based on our prior research, we believed that divalent salts would be more conductive than the monovalent salts. During our research we also learned that solution EC is affected by temperature and concentration, which we carefully controlled.
We tested four salt solutions, two divalent and two monovalent: calcium chloride (CaCl2), sodium sulfate (Na2SO4), sodium chloride (NaCl) and sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3). We began each replicate with 0.1 molar (0.1M) solution of each salt and then made serial dilutions at 0.01M and 0.001M.
We made 5 replicates of each salt at each of the three concentrations.
Prior to measuring the replicate EC values, we calibrated the EC meter each time with two standard solutions (12.88mS and 1.413mS). We recorded the EC and temperature of each replicate for 1 min. or until the EC readings stabilized