Solved cryptogram
Salt in water has stopped being salt. It has come apart into two kinds of charged particle.
Chemistry Facts, sourced to U.S. Geological Survey.
Solve it yourself
This fact is a cryptogram here: 73 letters over 19 different ones, graded hard.
Or go to the puzzle’s own page first.
What it means
In a crystal, sodium and chlorine are locked in an alternating grid by the pull between opposite charges. Water molecules, having a positive end and a negative end, crowd around each ion, surround it and carry it away, and the grid comes apart. What is in the glass is not tiny grains of salt but separated sodium and chloride ions drifting independently. That is why salt water conducts electricity and pure water barely does.
The claim comes from U.S. Geological Survey.
- SourceU.S. Geological Survey
- CollectionChemistry Facts
- Difficultyhard
- Length73 letters, 19 of them different
Nearby in the collection
The facts either side of this one.
- U.S. Geological Surveyeasy, 67 letters
- U.S. Geological Surveyeasy, 82 letters
- U.S. Department of Energymedium, 70 letters
- CIAAW, IUPACmedium, 71 letters
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