Can a rubbing alcohol conduct electric current?

1 Answer
Simon Moore
Apr 19, 2017

Yes, but only to an EXTREMELY limited extent!

Explanation:

Technically, nothing "doesnt conduct" electricity (i.e. nothing has a conductivity of 0.00000), but some materials have much lower conductivities than others. People often regard those materials with very low conductivities as non-conductive....technically not quite correct.

The conductvity of isopropyl alcohol (which is commonly the major component of rubbing alcohol) is typically 6 #muS.m^-1#, so it is very low (typical value for a metal would be multiple millions of #S.m^-1#!).

So the answer is: yes, but it just does it to an EXTREMELY small extent, so small that most people would regard it as non-conductive.

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