As far as I am aware, pure water in itself is not a conductor of electricity. It is the chemicals and impurities in water that conduct the electricity. In water, chemicals break up in ions - for example, Sodium Chloride (NaCl - table salt) breaks up into Na+ ions and Cl- ions. The sodium has a positive charge and the chlorine has a negative charge. There may also be deposits of metals such as phosphorus or potassium, or even heavy metals such as lead and iron or aluminium. These particles and ions carry the charge of electricity. I'm basing this on my memory of high school chemistry, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't think that water can conduct electricity but if you use distilled water it can conduct electricity but if you want to have a higher than the first you did just add some salt into the distilled water.Sodium and chlorine helps in conducting electricity by the reaction of the elementof sodium(Na)with the element chlorine(Cl) leads to the transfer of electrons from Na to Cl to form Na+ cations and Cl- anions.

I think it's because water molecules are polarised, but i might be wrong.

Anything will conduct electricity if the voltage is high enough. Lightening travels miles using the air as a conductor (imagine that voltage). Actually water isn't all that great a conductor wthout salt or other minerals present.

Neither water nor salt water conducts electricity. They conduct IONS. Electricity is just the flow of electrons. Not the atoms themselves. Ion flow in an electrolyte does not involve electrons leaving atoms and going to new atoms, it involves the actual atoms migrating with net electrical charges. Very pure water has very, very few ions. It is something on the order of a 10^-7 molar solution of hydrogen and of hydroxyl ions. Adding something that ionizes in water (an acid, which provides hydrogen ions and negative ions of another type, a base, which provides hydroxyl ions and positive ions of another type, or salts which provide two different positive and negative ions) will increase the number of ions that are present to flow. It's as simple as that. Pure water APPEARS to conduct electricity badly simply because it has so few ions. Salt water APPEARS to conduct well because it has so many. The big observable difference between electrical current and ion flow is at the junction between the two. The ion eventually has to give UP its charge to become an electrical flow, and doing so involves an oxidation or reduction reaction, which means a chemical change, more often than not including a chemical change of the metal that is making contact with the liquid. True electrical conductivity does not involve chemical changes. Thus you never have to replace copper power lines because it has all oxidized through, or anything crazy like that. 21 Pts Rate Answer

Distilled water does not conduct electricity because it contains no ions; it is pure. Tap water, for example, does conduct electricity because it is not pure, it contains ions.