Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

For my experiment, I will have to use salt water. First off, do the terms % salt water and % salinity of salt water mean the same thing? Assuming they do, if I were to have 10% salt water, would that mean I would
- dissolve 10 grams of salt in 100 grams of water
or
- dissolve 10 grams of salt in 90 grams of water?
I am a bit unclear on how percentage works, and I am not using parts per thousand.

Additionally, I will attach clips onto pieces of metal, dip them into the salt water, and wire them to a multimeter to see how much Voltage they are producing. I am using 2 clips and 2 same pieces of metal, one for each. If I have one black and one red wire, I believe I should plug them into the com and input respectively. Will the Voltage be immediately displayed or would I have to do some further calculation?

Thank you for reading.

Hi - I am not sure about the percentage thing so I will leave it to another expert to answer that, but I wanted to point out that we have a very detailed tutorial about how to use a multimeter that you will probably find helpful: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... multimeter

Hello,
I am not sure how to reply, so I hope I am doing it properly. Will you or another expert get back to me? I am still confused about the percentage part of my experiment.
Thank you!

Hi solarcrystals,

I'm following up on the question of salinity and % salt water. This prior post has good information on this topic:
viewtopic.php?t=17244

The link provided in the prior post is great for understanding how to make dilutions (% salt water).
https://educate-yourself.org/dc/saltwat ... ions.shtml

Salinity is telling you the same information as % salt water but in a different way. Salinity is given in parts per thousand typically (ppt).

This website is also a good resource on measuring salinity:
https://manoa.hawaii.edu/exploringourfl ... g-salinity

Hope this helps!
Dr. Christina Payne