Sodium chloride, ammonium chloride, sodium carbonate, and many others have tiny charged particles (positive and negative) called “salts”. When a “salt” is dissolved in water, it will separate into the two particles (plus and minus), which means that if you pass a current through the solution, the positive particles (positive ions) become attracted to the negative pole and the negative particles (negative ions) move toward the positive pole. This movement is allowing electricity to flow, and the this is the reason that “salt” solutions conduct electricity.
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When we add sodium carbonate is added to an iron solution, we get a red/brown solution.
Sodium carbonate, when added to different copper sulfate, creates copper hydroxide and copper carbonate (which you can see as a precipitate).
When we add citric acid to the copper solution, you can notice nothing really happens, but when we add sodium carbonate, the solution starts to change to a deeper blue color (but no precipitate). Citric acid prevented the reaction we noticed before! Hmmm….
C1000 Experiments: 78, 79, 80, 81
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