Cleaning keyboards & mice & phonesa with alchol

If we did not have conductors and insulators we would not have electronics! Mobile electrons are current; most are not.

Everything (except Plasma) has electrons. Conductors, Semiconductor and non-conductores. The conductivity depends on the kind of atomar/molekular 'construction'. See ceramics vs. metal

Saludos (an alle Vernünftigen, Rest sh. sig) Wolfgang

Well said. To further illustrate what you said, this might be helpful to the OP, it takes things a small step further.

Thanks for that link which had at the bottom this question.

"Can a rubbing alcohol conduct an electric current? The conductivity of isopropyl alcohol (which is commonly the major component of rubbing alcohol) is typically 6 uS.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."

But that's pure alcohol.

I had also forgotten that there 30% water by volume in rubbing alcohol: alcohol = 62.4% (w/w) or 70.0% (v/v)

Normal water is known to be conductive when not pure, but I can't find out if they put distilled water into rubbing alcohol or "regular" salty water.

It says the alcohol is not ionic, so, it's of low (essentially no) conductivity (as it's covalent so the electrons aren't all that free to move).

So neither the water (if distilled) nor the alcohol will be very much conductive, which is why it's used to clean electronics, it says. Plus it says that it doesn't dry as quickly as some (and faster than others), so it's in an ideal range for cleaning sticky keyboards while in use (which is what I was using it for at the time I posed the question to you).

Because the molecular structure of alcohol (C2H5OH) does not have any free or loosely bound electrons or holes where free electrons previously lived to conduct electrons. This covers the basics: "Conductors, Insulators, and Electron Flow"

Absolutes don't work well in practical situations. While 99.99999% pure alcohol might not conduct any measurable electricity, a few percentage points less will likely have sufficient impurities to conduce a tiny amount of electricity. The difference between conductive and non-conductive depend on where you round off the measurements.

In order to conduct, it has to have free or unbound electrons. Alcohol doesn't have any.

Nope. Electrons are energy carriers. See the allaboutcircuits.com article above.

I once did that with a CRT display and an alcohol spray bottle. It wasn't much of a flash/bang, but sufficient to get my attention. Also, alcohol tends to smear the silk screened lettering from the key caps. If you're using alcohol to remove flux with a brush, the metal ring or handle can easily short something on the keyboard PCB. Alcohol might not be conductive, but the crud the collects on the PCB, dissolved in alcohol, might be conductive. Lastly, pushing the keys while the computah is in operation is like the cat sleeping on the keyboards. Eventually, the wrong key gets pressed and your data or settings are trashed:

Do you have a reference to that startling assertion that plasmas have no electrons?

Sorry, I'm wrong. I've looked only to the ultrahot cernels loosing their electron cloud. But the electrons didn't disappear. So I withdraw my wrong

1st sentece.

Thanks for correcting me.

Saludos (an alle Vernünftigen, Rest sh. sig) Wolfgang

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Even ceramics can become good conductors when heated to a red glow.

Bakelite, as used for tube bases, can become alarmingly conductive at about 200C.

...... Phil

Support for your statement?

Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA

I thought plasmas were ONLY electrons.

That must be why my keyboard can be cleaned while I am using it. I pull off a key and spray alcohol/water 70/30 solution until it is soaked. Then I put the key back on & continue using it which loosens up the sticky grime. All the while I'm connected thanks to alcohol not conducting (much) current.

From Wikipedia: "Plasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter. It contains a significant portion of charged particles ? ions and/or electrons."

I don't think the space-charge of electrons as given off from the hot cathode of vacuum tubes would count as a plasma, but the glowing neon in an old indicator bulb would.

Phil Allison wrote: ===============

** See : Pure glass conducts like a metal when glowing hot - about 800 to 1000C ** FYI " alarmingly" = tube bias runs away.

Only takes about 20Mohms of leakage. Octal power tubes have screen and grid pins adjacent.

..... Phil

That's a good article and answers the question well.

One thing it doesn't really address is that the charge carriers need not be electrons, and in an alcohol solution there may be other charge carriers available.

"May" is a bit of a weasel-word. Pure alcohol has no unbound electrons, and no potential for ionization. Admixtures, dilutants and contaminants are an entirely different issue, and shame on the user to not account for this in their choice of solvents and/or cleaners.

Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA

Exactly. As soon as the alcohol has dissolved something - and how would it clean if it did not? then it very likely contains something that has ionized. There not need be any free electrons as long as the ions can move.

And if there's nothing to dissolve, then why clean at all? Just blow it out with some canned air.

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** Anything handled by human hands is likely to have oil, acid and salt on it. ( Notice how finger prints corrode some metal surfaces ) Salt and acid will make the solution slightly conductive, long as it contains some water.

FYI one of the worst common spillages onto electronics is orange juice. Yoghurt comes close too.

... Phil

Perhaps why electricity is called "juice"? ;-)

I'm not an electrical engineer but I don't think that's complete. Other things can be current besides electrons, and in liquids wouldn't the current be from other than electrons?

Water conducts very slightly, because a small amount of molecules are dissociated into H+ and OH-. These would travel through the fluid to the electrodes. I would imagine a small amount of isopropyl alcohol dissociates into C3H7+ and OH- also.

The EEs I knew talked about holes carrying current, I never really grasped that but didn't need to.