Gustav Wogen

Section: 076
Lab Partner: Ben Mellema

Conductivity Lab Report

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CHEM 101
 Gustav Wogen
Section: 076
Lab Partner: Ben Mellema

Introduction
By dissolving a chemical compound into water and then measure the solution’s conductivity,
we can determine if the compound is either ionic or molecular. This is because ionic
compounds dissolves into ions whether molecular compounds stay intact in the water. Ions
dissolved into water makes the water highly conductive whereas molecular compounds
dissolved into water does not change the conductivity of the water. An example of an ionic
compound that dissociates into water is potassium chlorine:

KCl(s) → K+(aq) + Cl-(aq)

All the table salt dissolves into potassium and chlorine ions which makes the water
conductive. An example of a molecular compound is methanol:

CH3 OH(l) → CH3 OH(aq)

Methanol dissolves but does not dissociate. This is the reason why it won’t affect the
conductivity of the water. Some compounds will only partly dissociate and therefore not
affect the conductivity as much as compounds like potassium chlorine. An example of a
compound like that is hydrogen fluoride:

HF(g) + H2 O(l) ⇆ H3 O+(aq) + F-(aq)

The double arrows indicate that the reaction is going in both directions.
The concentration of the ions in the water has a direct effect of the conductivity since
the more ions there is in the solution, the easier it will be for a current to flow through it.
Another aspect to considerate is the charges of the ions. For each molecule of KCl that
dissociates into the water, one K+ and one Cl- ion will be there. That makes it a total of two
ions per molecule. When a compound like CaCl2 dissociates into water, one Ca2+ and two Cl-
ions would be in the water. That makes it a total of three ions per molecule which is a lot
more than potassium chloride’s two. This will most likely have an effect on the conductivity
of the water.
There are also different types of ions. There are both monoatomic ions as well as
polyatomic ions. A polyatomic ion might be the ammonium ion, NH+4 which consists of five
different atoms. Will that fact affect the conductivity compared to the monoatomic ions?
To see how the conductivity changes depending on which compound, a linear
regression will be applied. With the volume of the electrolyte added one the x-axis, and the
conductivity on the y-axis, a linear graph will be able to plot. The compounds where the
conductivity changes a lot when small amounts of electrolyte is added to the water, will be
considered more conductive than the respective others. In other words, the graph with the
highest inclination corresponds to the compound that is the most conductive.
 Gustav Wogen
Section: 076
Lab Partner: Ben Mellema

Calculations and Discussion

In part A of the lab, the conductivity of different solutions (with low concentration), were
measured. The results are presented in the table below.

Solution Conductivity (μS/cm)

Distilled Water 55
0.05M CH3 OH 55
0.05M C2 H6 O2 55
0.05M NH3 410
0.05M CH3 COOH 520
Tap Water 620
0.05M KBr 8700
0.05M HCl 31000

The compounds that increased the conducutivty of the water was the compounds that are
made up of ions. Tap water have a lot of inpurities in it (ions) which makes it a good
conductor. Distilled water, which is as close to pure H2 O as there is. If the concentration of
the solutions were higher, the conductivity would also be higher. That is because then more
ions would be in the water and therefore be able to conduct the current better.
In part B of the experiment, four different solutions were mixed with distilled water.
The solutions were added to water one drop a time as to see how much the conductivity
would change for each added drop. Each of the solutions had a concentration of 1.0M. When
the data was collected, it was possible to apply a linear regression. If the conductivity would
increse a lot for every drop added to the distilled water, that would mean that that solution
was a good conductor.
 Gustav Wogen
Section: 076
Lab Partner: Ben Mellema

As pictured in the graph above, the span of the inclination was big between the graphs. The
compound that didn’t change the conductivity in water at all was CH3 OH, which does not
dissociate into ions when dissolved into water. The compound that changed the conductivity
the most on the other hand was AlCl3 . In the introduction, it was briefly mentioned that ionic
compounds that had a total ion concentration greater than two would affect the conductivity
more. NaCl has a total ion concentration of 1.0M+1.0M=2.0M. As pictured in the graph,
NaCl was not close to be the most conductive compound. AlCl3 on the other hand, has a total
ion concentration of 3.0M+3.0M=6.0M, three times larger than NaCl. When the inclination of
the two different graphs are compared, it is noticeable that the inclination of the graph
corresponding to AlCl3 is 3.05 times larger than the inclination corresponding to NaCl. The
conductivity might therefore change in relation to the total ion concentration.
In part C, the conductivity of polyatomic ions from NH4 NO3 were measured to see if
that had an impact on the overall conductivity. As a reference, the graph of NaCl are shown in
the diagram below. The overall ion concentration of both the compounds were 2.0M.

When comparing the two graphs, it is noticeable that they have almost identical inclinations.
Therefore, it is safe to say that polyatomic ions do not change the conductivity in a
distinctively different way than monoatomic ions.

Conclusions
In this experiment, the conductivity of different compounds dissolved in distilled water were
measured. The purpose of this experiment was to show the difference of molecular
compounds compared to ionic compounds. The results in part A showed that ionic
compounds were clearly more conductive compared to molecular compounds. They also
showed the difference in conductivity between distilled water and tap water. The reaon for
this is because of all the impurities in the tap water. The results from part B showed that as the
 Gustav Wogen
Section: 076
Lab Partner: Ben Mellema

total ion concentration increased, so did the conductivity. The results from part C showed that
polyatomic ions don’t have too much of an effect on the conductivity compared to
monoatomic. Abilities learned during this lab were: applying linear regression over large data
sets and that ions with a bigger charge affect the conductivity more than ions with a lower
charge.