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Q & A: Salt Water on the Electrodes |
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Blog -
Zapper Questions and Answers
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Zapper Question of the Day - Salt Water
Why do the instructions say NOT to put salt water on the hand-holds? Doesn't salt water give a better connection?
Why shouldn't I use salt water on the copper handles?
Zapping with Salt Water isn't a good idea.
The short answer: salt water doesn't allow much more zapping current to flow, yet it will corrode your copper alligator clips and hand-holds many times faster than fresh water.
Some background: When you wet the hand-holds with water, the purpose is to provide a good electrical path for the zapper current to flow between the hand-holds and through the conductor, in this case, the conductor is your body. The reason you wrap your hand-holds with paper towels is to prevent copper ions from being driven into the skin; Dr. Clark is very specific on this point, she does not want copper ions migrating into your body. When you use salt water on the paper towels you get a very good electrical connection, however, your copper handholds and the connectors themselves will corrode much faster than if you use fresh water.
Salt water provides a negligible improvement in conductivity compared with fresh water because the current path through the water is very short and your skin already has enough salts to provide the ions needed for excellent current flow. Therefore, we recommend that you use fresh water to get maximum benefit for many years with your Professional Auto-Zap zapper.
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