Water as an insulator

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Original poster: "Eric Davidson by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <edavidson-at-icva.gov>

Hi All,

I must say, it kinda scares me when I hear alot of folks talking about how
good an insulator water is.  While it is very much true that extremely pure
water can have a resistivity of more than 18 megohm cm^-2, however,  keeping
water this pure is VERY difficult.  If you so much as added a few grains of
ordinary table salt to a gallon of 18 meg water,  it would become
dangerously conductive.  I'd rather make believe that water is always
conductive, especially when a Tesla coil is in the neighborhood.  Just my
$0.02.  Coil safe.

Eric
edavidson-at-icva.gov