Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I am looking into completing a project on electrolysis of water. I was planning on adding different electrolytes to distilled water and seeing which conducts the most electricity. I was wondering if there was anyway i could harbor this electricity to do something such as lighting a lightbulb. I am not sure if this is possible. If it is not, how would I be able to figure out how conductive the water got due to the electrolyte I added. Any feedback would be great. Thank you for your time -Janice

Hi Janice,

Dissolving electrolytes into water changes the solution's ability to conduct electricity. But the solution itself isn't a source of any practical electric current. You can measure the effect of a solute on the electrical conductivity of a solution using the resistivity setting on a multimeter. This article (https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... rial.shtml) describes how to use a multimeter. If you measure the resistivity of your solutions, the conductivity is 1/(resistivity).