Re: Is Silver Acetate a good conductor and how do i know?

Conductivity of silver acetate

Sarah asked: “Is Silver Acetate a good conductor and how do I know?”

I would like to rephrase the question to: “Is the conductivity of a solution of silver acetate in water (say 0.1 molar) comparable to (say within a factor of ten) to the conductivity of a 0.1 molar solution of potassium chloride?”

The measure called the equivalent conductance of an electrolyte (see definition below)is commonly used in these situations. In my 66th edition of the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics it is defined on page F-80. The first sentence of this definition is sufficient for your question. Useful definitions might be in physical chemistry texts also.

Some measures of the equivalent conductance for several electrolytes are reported in the top table on page D-167 of the 66th edition of the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. [Note that the concentrations are given in “weird” units. This is an accident of history and I will not go into it.] Unfortunately silver acetate is not in the list.

The list does include silver nitrate, potassium nitrate, potassium chloride, and sodium acetate. Inspection of some of the numbers in this table strongly supports a conclusion that silver acetate is at least one-tenth as conductive as potassium chloride. Sarah, could you make a better estimate?

A Google search on “equivalent conductance” gave lots of hits and lots of confusion. The term is used in many fields with quite different meanings.

[I am not sure that it would be useful in the present situation, but the equivalent ionic conductivities for individual cations and individual anions are given at the bottom of page D-167 and on D-168. These data could be used for extra support.]

Admin note:
From http://www.weedinstrument.com/info_central/e.html, Equivalent conductance is defined as follows:

Equivalent Conductance (l): Equivalent conductance of an electrolyte is defined as the conductance of a volume of solution containing one equivalent weight of dissolved substances when placed between two parallel electrodes 1 cm apart, and large enough to contain between them all of the solution. l is never determined directly, but is calculated from the specific conductance (Ls). If C is the concentration of a solution in gram equivalents per liter, then the concentration of a solution in gram equivalents per liter, then the concentration per cubic centimeter is C/1000, and the volume containing one equivalent of the solute, is, therefore, 1000/C.