Conductivity of Water

Abstract
This experiment was designed to explore nature of water as it pertains to conductivity. It can be shown that the conductivity of a substance is directly related to the amount of dissolved salts in the substance, as salts are ions. One contributor to water conductivity, therefore, is soil, as it contains many minerals and other substances which, when dissolved in water, form ions. The experiment focused on the effect of three variables on water conductivity: the type of soil, the amount of time that the soil was saturated with water, and finally the amount of soil used in each solution. I therefore used two samples of soil, one normal sample from outside my apartment and another from a bag of potting soil. I also varied the amount of time that the soil was allowed to remain in the water for a sample of normal soil. Finally, for each type of soil, three different amounts were used in each trial. The results, as will be discussed more fully in the statistical analysis, i...