How can you tell the difference between salt water and water without tasting it?

Answer 1

Boil both of them.

Pure water will boil at 100 degree celcius.

Salt water will boil at a higher temperature as it contains impurities like salt.

Answer 2

Smear a Little on a clean piece of glass and let dry. If your in a hurry, drip some in a hot pan and see which leaves salt behind. You can see the salt. Same if you boil away the water or let the containers dry out. Or dip a strip of rag or a cotton string into each and let sit until the water wicks up and evaporates, one will grow salt crystals the other will not. Differential buoyancy will tell you. Boiling point will be slightly higher for the salt water. Drop a frog, or goldfish, or guppy in each, the one in the salt water will die. Force somebody else to taste them. Ask your teacher "Hey! Which one of these did you put the salt in?".

Or, use the Bush method. Pick either container and declare that you and only you know which one has the salt. When other methods of finding out accuse those people of being terrorist sympathizers who have not offered any alternative solutions. Tell them God told you.

Answer 3

Four quick ideas,

1) Measure the density. If the glasses are identical (have the same mass) and the volume of water is equal, just put the two glasses of water on a balance and see which one weighs more -- that’s the saltwater one.

2) Put a drop of the water from one on the end of a nail or something and put it in a gas flame. The salty one should turn the flame yellow/orange. Try this with the nail with nothing on it first to see if it causes a false positive. Even a tiny amount of salt (for example, from a little leftover sweat from your fingers) will turn the flame yellow/orange.

3) Measure the electrical conductivity -- an ohmmeter with probes you can stick in the glasses should do just fine. Saltwater conducts electricity much more than the pure water.

4) Let them evaporate -- the saltwater glass will leave a caky residue absent from the pure water glass. You may not even have to evaporate very much of them before you see the difference on the sides of the glasses.

Answer 4

You can boil it until all the water is vaporized. If a white powder-like substance remains, then it is salt water. Or, you can test each solution by conducting electricity through them. Salt water conducts electricity better than water.

Answer 5

2 gadgets with the comparable mass could have greater effective buoyancy in salt water than in sugar water and sugar water would be greater buoyant than organic water. including salt to the water forces greater molecules into the water. This makes the water greater dense.

Answer 6

An ohm meter can give you an electrical resistance which should be quite different from fresh water. Also, pH of fresh water should be near 7 while sea water should be a slightly higher number around 8 or 8.5.

Answer 7

Float on object, the same object on the two surfaces. The one that floats the highest in the water is the salt water

Answer 8

A couple of ways.

1. Measure electrical resistance.
2. You can smell the difference.
3. Bouyancy tests - If the water is salty enough, you would actually float in it.
4. Animals will shun it.
5. If you see a salt water crockadile near by.
6. Salt water will leave white traces in the ground near it, due from evaporation and the salt gets left behind.
7. If you irrigate a wound, it will hurt like tophet.

Answer 9

try to freeze it with a same sized sample of pure water. Salt water takes longer to freeze

Answer 10

Salt water is more conductive to electricity than normal water >> Salt water has less electrical resistance than normal water >> Measure electrical resistivity (rho)
(rho)salt water < (rho)normal water